Minus Human
by Kimmae
Summary: The four survivors finally escape from the infested city streets after weeks of fighting, but they soon find that their rescue does not mean their salvation. Has been revised 03/11
1. One

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

_I made some drastic changes! Some chapters will look just about identical, but mostly it has been Zoey's character which has been improved. She was a bit on the soft side before. Now she's a mean killing machine! GRR!_

_Sorry about the inbox pile-up. Chapters 10 and 11 have gone through the most significant changes, if you just wanna skip this and catch up on those._

Minus Human

Kimmae

One

The four of them sat in silence, the only sound in their ears the constant slice of the helicopter blades through the air and rain. They were panting heavily; their hands still clutched the hilts of their guns, fingers poised over the triggers. They looked on as the helicopter circled the hospital roof while the infected gathered like bacteria around the sides, some falling to their deaths. It was odd watching them from so far away; it had been weeks since any of them could feel any sort of safety and comfort knowing that those things couldn't touch them anymore.

Zoey looked away first. Everyone was still panting, and she could see them trying to edge their hands away from their weapons, trying to realize that the danger was over. They all stared at each other for a long moment, then a scattered laugh escaped Zoey.

It was a moment before Francis huffed with amusement, a small grin breaking across his lips. When Louis guffawed out loud, the three of them broke down laughing together. Zoey dropped her pistols in her lap, then covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes blurring with tears of joy.

"Did you—did you see me kick in that last guy's face?" Zoey spluttered through her giggles, doubling over her guns. It wasn't the kicking that amused her at all, and everyone else knew that. They had escaped, they'd made it to the helicopter pad, and they were headed to the evacuation site.

The other two men that shared her mirth laughed harder, and Francis leaned on his shotgun like a cane, rubbing his eyes with one of his dirty, blood-stained hands.

"Fuckin'-A," he choked, shaking his head. Louis threw himself back into his seat, his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth open wide, shaking with silent laughs. Zoey wrapped her arms around her stomach, blinking away the tears, then she caught sight of Bill.

He was sitting casually in his seat, with his forearms resting on his knees and his hands dangling loosely. He was gazing down at the hospital as it shrank away, a solemn look on his face, as if he was driving away from a funeral of an old friend. Zoey's laughter died slowly as she watched him, and her face melted into something like his. The other two stopped laughing shortly after, and they all watched Bill.

"Bill?" Zoey asked quietly, cutting the silence harshly.

"Not a pretty sight," he murmured, pulling a cigarette from behind his ear. He turned it over in his hands a few times, staring down at it. "I've seen war, I've seen death... but I never saw this. Not much to laugh about after that."

"We're out of the frying pan, man," Louis said with fake optimism, trying to mask the fact that his mood had been spoiled. "We're safe now."

Bill shook his head. "Can't call a man happy 'til he's dead. Can't say he's safe 'til you've killed him."

No one said anything. The blades seemed to get louder. One of the pilots pressed the button on his headset. "Copy that. Four uninfected individuals, three male, one female. ETA five minutes. Over."

Francis and Louis looked away from Bill, but Zoey kept staring at him sadly, her mouth slightly agape.

"Bill, we've made it."

He kept staring at his cigarette, and he shook his head at her. He finally stuffed it into his mouth, then lit the last match he had. The tip of the cigarette burned bright for only a second before it faded out. He pulled it from his lips, blew out the smoke slowly, then looked back out towards the hospital. The wind whipped at the loose tufts of hair that peeked out from under his veteran's cap, and he squinted his eyes against the sting of the draft. Moonlight touched his face, and Zoey realized just how worn and aged Bill really was. It wasn't to say that she hadn't realized he was an old man before, only that she never really saw the turmoil and hardship that had haunted him. He looked haggard, like he'd grown too old to experience more in his life. Zoey reached out and touched his knee, but he didn't respond.

"Bill..."

No one said anything else for the rest of the ride. By the time they touched down on the helipad at the evacuation site, Zoey saw the same look in Francis's and Louis's faces. She felt a little animosity to Bill for spoiling the mood, but she realized that it was the truth. The truth wasn't always welcome, but it was important to accept. It's foolish to live life while shutting out reality.


	2. Two

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

_Nor do I own any rights to Coca Cola products._

Two

"Welcome to Ripken Stadium," the pilot yelled over his shoulder, trying to carry his voice over the din of the helicopter blades. Zoey, Francis and Louis looked up from the floor to the doors, observing the sight outside. They landed somewhere in the outfield of the baseball diamond, and they could see armed guards in masks strolling amongst tables covered in supplies and cots on the edges of the field. The fence around the stadium was lined with cement reinforcements and barbed wire, and a couple of makeshift watchtowers stood here and there along its length. The stands were empty, save for a few people sitting in the seats, wrapped in wool blankets and eating from ration packs. The four survivors would have been excited to see this sight, but those small few words from Bill was enough to dispel their victory. Zoey didn't even feel like their two and a half weeks of trying to make it to the hospital was even worth it anymore.

One of the pilots held out a hand for Zoey, and she looked up, surprised. She hadn't even realized they had approached—something she would have been berated by Bill for ("You need to keep you backs to the wall and your eyes everywhere else."). She placed her pistols down on the ground, then took the pilot's hand.

"We have to confiscate those," the pilot affirmed. "No civilians are permitted weapon possession in the stadium."

"Sure," she murmured, nodding her head and letting his hand go. Her head pointed towards the ground, falling like lead, and she tucked the stray strand of hair from her eyes behind her ear. "I understand."

Bill climbed down slowly after her, the obvious strain in his joints and muscles showing in his face. Louis and Francis jumped down after them, and two men came forward to take their guns from their hands. Louis looked a little taken aback, like he was still trying to figure out what happened, while Francis had the expression on his face like he'd just been separated from his lifelong friend.

"No guns permitted to civilians inside the stadium," the man repeated to Francis, and they walked away with guns in hand. Zoey looked to him, and felt a little amused that he seemed so hurt. When she caught Bill dropping his cigarette in the grass and snuffing it with his boot, though, the somberness returned. Even the way he moved reflected his melancholy.

"We'll have you move to the lower corridors and get you signed up," the pilot said to the group, but looking at Zoey. He pointed to a door embedded between the lower stands by one of the pits. "You'll be asked to fill out some forms, then you'll go through some tests before they get you to the showers."

"They?" Zoey asked.

"Research team," the pilot replied. "Everyone that passes through here goes through the tests. Trying to understand the infection, you see."

Zoey nodded, and the pilot patted her on the shoulder, leading her forward. She followed the soldier, and her companions fell into step at her side. She wasn't used to seeing them without weapons in their hands while they moved together. Even when they slept in the safe houses, everyone held their guns like they were teddy bears.

"Huh, showers my ass," Francis muttered. "More likely to delouse us than let us have showers."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Bill said in his usual growl.

Zoey looked at Louis, who walked next to her. He gave a sidelong glance at her, playing with the loose knot in his tie.

"See anyone in the stands you know?" he asked.

Zoey scanned the seats briefly. They were far away, but she was confident she'd spot someone she knew right away. "No," she replied quietly. She'd accepted long ago that everyone she knew was dead.

"You smell that?" Francis asked, breaking the silence and tilting his nose into the air. "I smell roast beef. They've got fucking roast beef!"

"Cool your jets, Francis."

"I haven't had a decent meal in... three weeks, man. Feels like ages. Fuck, I need me a juicy, fat, American cheeseburger—"

Louis pushed open the large double doors into the hall. The corridor was a stale cement colour with pale green fluorescent light giving it a sick, unwelcoming feeling. Zoey caught sight of her hands in the light—they looked grey, just like the infected. She stuffed them in her pockets.

"—so when this is all over, it'll be a round on me, back at _Staley's_."

Zoey laughed, but it was disheartened. She couldn't be cheerful anymore. "So you'll be on call in two years?"

Francis eyed the back of her head quizzically, then chuckled. "Oh, right. Don't worry, kid, there'll be a Coke in it for you."

"Thanks, Francis."

"Excuse me," someone called from an adjoining hall, and the four of them stopped. A man in a white hazmat suit called to them from a crappy looking folding table. There were pens and forms stacked on the top. "You need to fill these out, please."

They slowly made their way over to the man, and he sorted out four forms and pens for them to grab. Zoey eyed his appearance with concern. _Why is he wearing that_?

"Make sure you sign the top and the bottom," he said, pointing to the X'd lines on the page. "Otherwise, I can't let you through."

The four of them grabbed a paper each and began to fill it out. It seemed like a basic form you might fill out at a doctor's office for a record, or at some retail store for a membership. Zoey got halfway through, then paused.

"I don't know my social security number," she admitted, looking to the man in the suit. She tried not to look pleading, but she probably did anyway. He gave her a look of mixed sympathy and annoyance, and he waved a hand.

"Just skip over it."

Last name, first name, address, postal code, phone number. It depressed her knowing that none of those things held any importance anymore.

"Hey, why d'you guys need this info anyway?" Louis tested.

"Keep track of the civilians in the stadium," the man replied simply.

"I just mean... is my insurance info really that important?"

The man sighed. "It's so that we can do a number of things: security check, medical history, those sorts of things."

Louis eyed the signature line warily, then signed it. After Francis finished, he dropped the pen down on the table gruffly, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"That's all I got," he said, shuffling his boots. The man picked it up, looked it over, then shot Francis a dirty look.

"All right, move along."

Francis strolled along around the table down the hall. The others finished their papers soon after, then followed after him.

"That was a crock of shit, wannit?"

"No kidding," Bill growled.

"Think they're doing more than a background check?" Louis whispered.

"I think they're profiling," Bill said slowly. Zoey looked between her three companions.

"Profiling for what?"

Bill looked over his shoulder at her only briefly, then looked away before replying: "Survival of the fittest."

Zoey chuckled skeptically. "All right, old man." Despite her outward disagreement with Bill's paranoid assertion, she couldn't help but feel she was being dragged a little further down by his somber mood. She suddenly longed to be outdoors again, fighting and running for her life. But she couldn't exactly justify why.


	3. Three

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

Three

At the end of the hall, the four of them were ushered into a locker room. It still smelled like sweat and old laundry, like it hadn't been cleaned in a very long time. When they rounded the corner into the room, the four of them noticed where the majority of lockers had been ripped from the walls. The room was large and bare, and up at the front sat a table, where another man in a hazmat suit sat waiting for them.

There were several more tables like his, all lined with viles, rubbers, and syringes in plastic packaging. There were two chairs at each table, and the man closest to Zoey grabbed a rubber off his table stretched it, motioning to the chair with a nod of his head. "Have a seat."

She hesitated only briefly before moving to the chair. She hated needles. The others approached the other tables beyond, each a little less apprehensive than she.

"Can you roll your sleeve up to your shoulder?"

She eyed her arm. "I don't think so."

"I'm going to need you to take that off, then."

For some reason, this bothered Zoey more than it should have, but she pulled the zipper down anyway. Maybe it was because she'd worn that sweater straight for some time, and it had all the sweat and blood on it from the beginning of her ordeal. It was like parting with a security blanket.

Her tank top beneath was stained yellow under her arms, and a putrid smell filled her nostrils once she slipped the sweater off, but the man in the suit didn't seem to mind as much as she did. He probably couldn't smell her hardship through his environment controlled suit, anyway. She held out her arm, keeping her mouth a tight line and keeping her eyes downcast.

The man tied the rubber around her arm, then started to unwrap the syringe.

"You're the first survivors to reach us in a week, you know," the man chatted, pushing the plunger closed. "Didn't think we'd see anymore."

"I didn't think we'd make it here."

"Well, congratulations," the man said unenthusiastically. "Deep breath."

Zoey made sure she was looking away when she sucked in air. Her eyes closed and her nostrils flared when she felt the needle pierce her skin. It pinched a bit, but she counted backwards in her head, just like her doctor used to instruct her when she was little. The ordeal was always over before she reached _one_.

"That's all we need. For blood, anyway," the man said once he pulled the needle out. He quickly placed a cotton ball on her arm, then taped it in place. "Do you have any recent lacerations from any infected?"

Zoey mentally went over her body. "Yes."

"Good," he replied. "Well, not good for you, I guess. They'll swab you in the next room."

"Okay." she said. Her voice came off more shaky than she wanted it to.

"Hey, it'll be easier than this was," the guy tried to reassure her, but his voice was so flat and uninvolved that Zoey hadn't felt more hopeless since the infection first spread.

She picked up her sweater, throwing her arms back into the sleeves and pulling it on hastily. If the other men just wanted to swab her injury, then they wouldn't need her to take off her sweater again. She just hoped they didn't want her to take off any other articles of clothing.

She continued through the room, towards the back where the showers were. There were even more tables, but different equipment on them. "Ah, hello there," another man said. She studied him, a scrutinizing look on her face. They all looked the same under their suits.

As she sat down in the next empty chair, she realized that they were wearing the suits to protect themselves from the infection. They were shielding themselves from the survivors. They weren't immune.

"So, you have lacerations for us to check out?"

Zoey nodded.

"Where?"

"My left thigh."

"Mind swinging your leg up on the table?"

Zoey lifted her leg up to the flimsy table, her injury facing him. Four shallow scrape marks were visible through identical tears in her pants. The man leaned forward to look at her leg, then leaned back, picking up a swab in front of him and unwrapping it from the plastic. "You'll have to slide your pants down."

She tried not to blurt it, but it slid past her lips before she could stop herself. "What?"

"So I can swab it properly."

Zoey sat dumbstruck on the chair for a second, withdrawing her leg. "You can't do it with them on?"

The man looked at her for a second, then his eyes grew wide. "Oh," he murmured, then tried to make a gentle face. "Don't worry about it, it'll just be for a second. I need to get a swab of the entire area, that's all."

She stared at a nondescript place on the table. "You're safe, really. Think of this as the doctor's office."

"Sorry," she said, then went to unbuckle her pants. Her hands were shaking slightly. For some reason, she felt she would have been less nervous to face another horde. She picked herself up in the chair in order to slide her pants down, then lifted her leg back up onto the table.

"Okay, this'll be quick and painless..." he said, wetting her skin down with the wipe. After a few swipes, Bill, Francis and Louis walked from around the corner, and Zoey felt her breath hitch. She could see them glance at her then quickly look away. Her face felt hot.

"I was wondering," Zoey said, trying to distract herself, "if not many survivors come through here, why were all of you sitting here waiting for us?"

"We got the call you were coming in," he replied coolly, continuing his work on her leg. "Besides, we run routine tests on the people here every couple of days, so it's nothing out of the ordinary."

"How many people are here, anyway?"

"Well, including the military and the research staff, I'd have to say... maybe around sixty. Well, closer to sixty-four, now."

"There," he muttered. "We're done."

Zoey swung her feet to the ground, then stood quickly, sliding her pants back up and refastening them. She tried to look at the others from the corner of her eye, but they all had their eyes averted. They were probably just as embarrassed as she was.

"Showers are at the end over there," the man with the swab said, pointing past the last set of lockers. "They'll take your clothes from you before you go in."

"Oh. Do I... get them back?"

He laughed gently. "Of course. You'll get them back after we wash them."

She felt a headache coming on. _I've walked from one lion's den into the other_, she thought. She didn't want to deal with these researchers, nor did she want to surrender anymore of her things to these people. Zoey felt angry that she was forced to trust all personnel in the stadium after less than ten minutes.

"Go on, they're waiting."

And they were urging her into their turbulent pace. She gave the researcher a less than friendly look before she made her way towards the showers.

The others were at the tables ahead of her. As she walked past, she watched Bill closely, feeling somewhat sad. He'd taken off his torn camouflage jacket and pulled off his ruined white tee-shirt so that the man could swab the half-healed gash on his back. The skin hanging off of him as if he was wishing it would fall off. The worst though was his eyes: they were heavy looking, with a hint of pity in them when he looked at her. Zoey had grown a hard outer shell over the weeks, so she would have normally resented this. "Bill, what're those puppy dog eyes for?" she would ask harshly. But everything he'd said since boarding the helicopter had made her feel anything but angry. Now she felt uneasy.

She made her way down the hall, and she could see the shower sign at the end. She knew she shouldn't have expected any better, but it seemed the shower would be communal, and there'd be no privacy for her. When she got down the hall, though, she caught sight of two more men in hazmat suits waiting for her; each held a plastic bag in their hands.

"Evening," the man on the left said. Zoey realized that her hands were balled into fists and her toes were curled in her high tops. The man shifted the bag in his hand, then said, "We're going to need your clothes for sampling."

They were silent in the hallway, both men staring at Zoey as she stood like a statue. "Don't I have a place to change?"

The man's eyes darted around behind his plastic mask, and the other man looked to him, as if he wasn't expecting her to retaliate in such a way. "There's nowhere else to go."

Zoey stared at them, her face quite unreadable to the men before her.

"We'll turn our backs, if that makes you feel better."

Zoey studied the man's voice. He sounded annoyed almost, as if he hadn't the time for pity or empathy, like he'd been through this situation several times before, and didn't wish to put the effort forth to be caring and comforting anymore.

She looked at them incredulously. "Well?" she said.

They glared daggers at her as they turned on their heels, turning their backs from her. Zoey closed her eyes, and with a wavering breath, she unzipped her red wind breaker with a shaky hand.

She'd heard of people having anxiety disorders where their hands went numb, but she didn't think it would have felt this cumbersome. It was as if a heavy blanket was draped across her shoulders and tight rubber bands were tied around her wrists. Zoey shrugged her jacket to the floor, and it hit the old linoleum with a splat, as if the dirt, grime and blood had turned it into ooze. It took a little effort and courage on her part to grab the hem of her T-shirt, but once she did, she pulled it up over her head quickly, letting it fall to the floor in a pile with her jacket. After that, she worked like a blur, nearly tearing off her clothes to get them off of her as quickly as possible.

"I'm done," she said, wrapping her arms around her awkwardly, trying to cover her nakedness. She pointed her eyes to the ground, and she could see that the men didn't turn around again. She felt slightly relieved at this.

"Go on ahead, then," one of them said flatly. Zoey stepped between them cautiously, as if they were two highly explosive pillars that would go off at any second. When she entered the next room, she paused.

The shower heads had been torn from the walls, and hoses extended from the nozzles that protruded from the wall. At each hose, there were two people. She could see different faces through each mask, but essentially they all looked the same. They all stared at her with the same blank, unperturbed faces as the others had.

"Step into the circle please," the man nearest to her said, waving an arm over. There was a woman standing with him, but it did little to make her feel more comfortable. _Like the doctor's office. _She never had to stand naked in front of a panel of people at the doctor's.

Zoey stepped forward tentatively, keeping her eyes trained on the taped-on circle surrounding the drain on the floor. All she wanted to do was run away, but she knew she had nowhere else to go. _ More likely to delouse us than let us have showers. _Zoey stepped into the circle and watched the pair holding the hose, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists. She was furious.

The man turned to the wall to twist the tap _on_. Water spurted from the hose, hissing sharply from the high pressure.

"This might sting a bit," he said, and lifted the hose.

Zoey was nearly knocked back by the force of the water spurting at her, and she had to reposition her feet and throw her arms in front of her to block it, abandoning her attempts to cover herself up. She spurted, choking on some of the water that got into her mouth. The man waved the water up and down her body, giving her the sensation of being clawed by an infected.

"Turn," the woman shouted over the din of the hose, and Zoey tried to shoot her a scorning look, but failed to do so when the water lashed at her eyes. She turned as ordered, and the water beat down on her back like a whip cracking at her skin. _Fuck!_ she cursed mentally, gritting her teeth.

The hoses were turned off, and Zoey turned to face them, heat in her eyes. "Why the hell was the pressure so high?"

The woman who replied appeared bored. "We need to ensure any and every trace of the infection is cleaned off."

"And I obviously can't do that myself," she bit back.

The woman blinked slowly. "Weneed to ensure it, ma'am. Towel?" She motioned to the towel cart sitting near the exit. Zoey drew her lips into a thin line before heading towards the cart, marching by each of the researchers, no longer caring about the fact that she was naked.

"We'd rather wait until the lady's done, pal," Francis said harshly from the hall where Zoey had entered. She looked over to where the two men with bags stood (the bags now filled with her and her friends' clothing) apparently arguing with Francis. Another strike of embarrassment coursed through her, and she closed her eyes briefly, regaining her self composure as she snatched a towel off the cart and dried herself off.

There were scrubs in plastic packaging on the bottom of the cart, and once she was dry, Zoey tossed the towel carelessly to the ground and swiped a package into her hands. She ripped open the plastic and pulled the clothes on, her movements heated.

"For researchers," she said, as she pulled the top over her head, "you've got a pretty piss-poor grasp on the notion of ethics."

Without turning towards the researchers, Zoey stormed from the room out into the adjoining hall. She passed a few doors before turning the corner into the main hallway that led to the diamond and the player's pits. There was a concession stand there, and two men in plain garb with face masks worked behind the counter. She could smell the roast beef that had Francis giddy like a school girl. The men glanced up at her momentarily, then attempted to avoid eye contact and continue working on the sandwiches they were making. Zoey realized that her breaths were coming in huffs, and that her face must have been glowing with anger. She ran her hands over her hair, then leaned against the wall next to the exit, trying to calm herself down. She could hear the hiss of the hoses from behind her as her friends were no doubt receiving similar treatment.

Her hair was still pulled back into a ponytail, but the band holding it in place was lopsided, having been blasted to the side from the hose. She pulled it out and gathered her hair together again, retying it properly. He heart rate had slowed, but her anger had not dissipated. But there was something worse underneath it all, for she realized that there was nowhere else to go anymore. For the first time in what seemed like years, Zoey was shaken.


	4. Four

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

Four

For the night, citizens slept in the stands while personnel slept indoors and the military force stationed themselves in the field. Some people slept in the seats, some wrapped themselves in their blankets and laid across the grimy cement ground. Zoey was one of these individuals. The only difference between her and the rest of the refugees was that they got their rest while she lay awake.

Naturally, her three companions were nearby. Lying on the ground a few feet away was Louis. He fell into a seemingly restful sleep with his mouth partly open as he snored silently. Francis, on the other hand, sat in the seat closest to him with a blanket draped over his torso. He had an empty can of soda in his hand (it was the closest to beer they had, he'd said) and his head tilted back over the seat while he snored loudly. Closest to her was Bill.

When the three of them emerged from the locker room and met with her in the hall, Zoey didn't meet their eyes. They didn't try to catch hers, either. She couldn't imagine going anywhere without them; she had been fighting alongside them for so long that separation felt alien and dangerous. After she had been cracked open and stripped of her dignity in front of them, though, she felt slightly ashamed to be seen by them.

What was more strange was how they looked; she started to see their clothes as their bodies and their guns as their limbs. Now that they had neither and donned scrubs with recyclable slippers, it was as if they were totally different people. Despite that, she did not want to be without them in this place again.

That was why when they picked their place to rest in the stands, Zoey laid herself down at Bill's feet. If it bothered him, he didn't show it. She thought of Bill as she might her father, or her brother, or some other patriarchal figure in a young woman's life. Zoey was nineteen years old, but she felt she had lived most of her life in the past two and a half weeks of infection, ever since she had met the trio on the streets. In those two weeks, Bill had shown her how to live in this new life, how to adapt and survive. He had been the one to show her the coldest, harshest truths, yet she felt safest and most comforted nearest to him.

Zoey looked up inconspicuously to try and see if he in fact was still awake. The men and women in the quarantine had taken away his cigarettes, so he had nothing to occupy his hands with. Instead, he rubbed his thumb along his fingertips, looking out with watchful, wary eyes into the field. Zoey recognized that look; he'd often scan the horizon in the city with those eyes, watching for any infected, any threats to their lives.

_Can't call a man safe until you've killed him,_ Zoey thought to herself.

She lowered her head back down on her blanket. Just a week before, she slept in a safe house easily while infected pounded at the flimsy doors. Now, as a light breeze blew through her hair and a serene silence surrounded them, she could not for the life of her find rest.

Then she heard it. It was far off, but she knew those growls and roars all too well to forget them so soon. Her body stiffened, a lump formed in her stomach, and her body went cold.

She heard it again, and so did the soldiers in the field. A few of them call out to each other quietly before they ran across the grass. Loud snapping noises filled the stadium as the searchlights were turned off. Francis jolted and mumbled as he jolted out of sleep, and Louis groaned a bit, shifting on the floor.

"Wha's goin' on?" Francis mumbled, and Bill sharply shushed him.

Despite being at a safe distance, hidden behind a barricade of protection, Zoey laid so very still, paralysed by fear, as if her motionlessness was her only source of cover from the thing that loomed in the distance. _We don't have any weapons_, she kept repeating to herself. _We don't have any weapons_!

She felt Bill's hand on her shoulder, but she couldn't bring herself to look up. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. "Zoey."

She couldn't speak.

"Don't move until they tell us to, Zoey," Bill warned. She'd have no problem doing that. "We have to stay still."

"Hey, what's—" Francis whispered, and then he heard it, too.

"Shit," he hissed. "It's fucking galloping, man!"

Zoey's bladder threatened to go.

"What's up?"

"Keep it down, Louis," Bill said with a growl.

They stayed in silence, listening to the creature howl in the night. A few more people in the stands began to stir and panic quietly amongst themselves. Zoey managed to squeeze her eyes shut.

_Stay quiet and it'll pass us by—_

"FUCK!"

The soldier's yell echoed throughout the stadium before the thundering crash of the breaking wall below broke any reserve the people in the stands had left.

"RUN!" Bill shouted, and the three men leapt from their places toward the entrance indoors. Zoey tried to stand, but her body refused to respond.

"Come on, Zoey!" Louis shouted from above her. When she didn't move, he shook her by the shoulder. "_C'mon_!"

As the beast roared again, Zoey's legs jolted free of their petrification, and Francis leaned down, grabbed Zoey by the arm, and whipped her up to her feet like a rag doll.

"Move that ass, honey!"

The entire stadium was filled with screams and the roars of the infected below. Whoever was left in the stands was running for the exits, and the soldiers below rushed into formation to take on the sizable foe that crashed into their walls. They had prepared the stadium to withstand attacks from infected, but not from _this_.

They ran across the aisle to the double doors leading into the inner halls of the stadium, but as they got closer, the doors were pushed closed after a few civilians squeezed through its opening.

"Fuck!" Louis shouted, sprinting forward. "Hold the goddamn doors!"

He pounded up against the side with his shoulder, but the doors were locked. There was a loud crash mingling with the gunfire, and the four of them looked below with the other stranded men and women to see the large creature crashing through the helicopter. It rolled over itself a few times, crumpled in its side like an injured animal. Men in uniform dove to the side, trying to avoid the helicopter and the raging infected. As it threw its arms around, batting men around like blades of grass, Zoey could scarcely see the man that used to live under the mutated muscle and frame.

"There's one of him and enough of them," Bill shouted over the disaster. "If it keeps clear of the stands, we'll be fine."

Something caught her eye in the distance. She had seen such things before, but this time safety was inaccessible at an arm's length away, and there was no gun in her hand. She felt like a slab of meat being served in the midst of a hungry crowd.

"They're fucking everywhere!" Louis shouted. Zoey looked around wildly to see if she could find anything that could be used defensively against the coming onslaught of infected, but before she set eyes on anything, a brief quake shook the stadium. She looked back to the field to see the oversized monster crash to the ground.

The gunfire ceased shortly, the gap filled with the shouts of other shoulders. "Regroup, they're comin' in fast!"

Without any weapons, without any way to defend themselves, they were powerless. Zoey felt her sense of strength and heroism that had built up over the previous weeks slipping from her fast. She was cornered and threatened, and she was pushed back to square one again.

"D'you hear that?"

Zoey looked up from her place on the ground, focusing her senses on her surroundings. The soldiers below began firing again, but it was drowned out by what she heard nearby. Unlike the distant howl of the large beast before, this sound was quiet and close—a sob mixed with a growl. It was far more terrifying.

To the right along the stands, perched on top of a chair, was a woman with hair matted to her skull with sharp, bony limbs and eyes circled with blood. From a distance, she could see its sharp teeth bared like a feral dog, blood dripping from the corners. Its eyes had a frightening glint to them, and they were locked onto Zoey.

"Run!" Zoey called, turning on her heel and darting across the walkway. The gunfire from below was almost deafening, but she could still hear the mind-shattering shriek pierce the air behind her before she was tackled to the ground. She was pinned on her stomach by the surprisingly powerful creature, and a searing white-hot pain spread across her back.

"Get it off!" Zoey screamed, trying to turn over and defend herself from the painful strikes. "_Get it off me_!"

The slicing stopped and sounds of struggle were all that were left. Zoey tried to collect herself and turn over, and she watched as Francis held the infected by its wrists, struggling to keep it at bay as it snapped at him with its jaws.

"Francis, you got her?"

"Do I need to fucking answer?"

Zoey tried to scramble away weakly, but everything felt numb with shock and adrenaline from the attack. She looked at her arms; they were scraped and bleeding. She reached behind her and felt her back. It was wet.

"Get the extinguisher!" Bill shouted, pointing towards the doors. Louis rushed over and tore it from the wall, then moved behind Francis.

"Move!"

"Fuck you!"

"Let go of its wrists and dodge to the side!"

Francis glanced briefly over his shoulder, saw Louis standing with the butt end of the extinguisher held at eye level, then complied.

The infected stumbled forward with surprising speed, and Louis rammed the extinguisher into its face. Its body snapped backwards and it struck the floor. Without any moment of hesitation, Louis raised the extinguisher over his head, then pounded it into the monster repeatedly. Zoey couldn't watch.

She didn't know when he stopped, nor did she realize when the shooting had ceased below, but everything had gone relatively silent. Perhaps it was the ringing in her ears that drowned everything out. Her forehead felt tender and slick where she'd landed on the concrete floor, but she could scarcely feel the sharp pain she knew would plague her later. She knew she was badly injured, but her head swooned and she couldn't concentrate on anything to feel concerned about it.

"Zoey," someone said. She slowly looked to the side. Bill was there. She'd forgotten briefly that he didn't have his old veteran clothes anymore. He looked strange without his hat.

"Bill?"

"You're gonna be okay," he said, but his voice sounded funnelled, like it came from far away. Zoey closed her eyes. She found it comforting to be wherever she was; along with half her face, she couldn't feel the fear that plagued her so easily before. Then she was robbed of any thought as she fell unconscious.


	5. Five

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

Five

"We got plenty of samples; RG1-A—an _abundance_ of RG1-A—RM2-A, RM1-A, and this girl—this girl is simply covered with RM1-C."

"Has she been through quarantine?"

"We took the samples off of her, but we want to see how resilient she really is. We haven't had a chance to see a survivor from a RM1-C attack, and we need to see if her body can properly heal."

"Properly heal? Why would the rabies mutation have any impediment on proper cell regeneration?"

"We don't know what else it does, that's why we're locked up in hazmat suits and face masks while they're locked outside. This is the safest and most efficient way to observe the infection."

"So, that's why the doors were locked during that attack."

"Partly. We couldn't risk anyone carrying the infection inside in case they weren't actually immune. Plus, we didn't expect our fortifications to be so inadequate. When that RM2-A broke through the wall like it was putty, a few of the staff overreacted."

"Overreacted?"

"Survival instinct calls for every man for himself. You would have done the same Peters, I assure you."

"So everyone else is still locked outside?"

"No, they're free to wander. The infection is only spread through physical contact, so everyone who was unharmed was cleared. It was a bit of a challenge to get the conscious victims inside, though. We almost had to knock them out. They're isolated in other rooms."

"...Well, about the wall, are they repairing it?"

"A few units were working on clearing the field and repairing any damage possible, while a few men with some basic skills are doing their best to mend the wall. It'll be a sore spot, but we're counting on hordes like those to be at a minimum in the future, so we might just hold off until the reserves arrive."

"We lost the helicopter?"

"Yes."

"That reminds me—do we have an idea on the infected death rate so far?"

"Mm, I was afraid you'd ask that. Since it's a mutation of rabies, we only hoped that the fatality rate would be the same, but we have evidence that suggests they can live as long as their other bodily needs are met."

"Are you sure?"

"No, we're not. If it is true, there's also evidence pointing to the fact that an infected individual's rationale for caring for their basic needs is hindered considerably. The soldiers have been watching a few lonely drifters in the fields; they meander a bit before collapsing on the ground, and then they just sit there."

"I don't know if that's comforting or nerve-wracking."

"I don't think it's meant to be either."

Silence.

"How long has she been asleep?"

"Eleven or so hours. She's due for a swab at O-nine hundred."

"How did she survive that RM1-C?"

"A few people pulled it off of her. They beat it to death with a fire extinguisher."

"Mm. Did we get the body?"

"Yes. It's in the lab. There aren't any reports on it yet."

"Don't you find all of this just a little frightening?"

"What do you mean?"

"We're surrounded by the apocalypse, and the only thing we have to protect ourselves are clown suits. One scratch, one bite, and it's all over. Some of the soldiers had to be discharged from the facility. They were screaming at the wall for hours. We practically killed them, James."

"...Each man for himself, Lyson."

Zoey lay very still. She wasn't sure if the researchers were concerned she might be able to hear them or not. Eventually, she heard them walk away. She was alone now.

She didn't dare open her eyes, for she was afraid of what she might see. From what she could tell, she was lying on her stomach on a cot with a scratchy blanket covering her. There was an IV in her left hand, and it irritated her skin. Her back felt numb and cool; they must've put ointment on it or something. That infected woman must have scratched her up something horrible.

It was dark, too. The only light she could feel on her eyelids was coming from that small window in the door where the two researchers had been talking. It was cold and quiet, save for the soft hum of a computer or a machine next to her bed. After a few minutes, she realized that sticky circles were attached to her temples and her chest. They were monitoring her, just like those men had said. What was going to happen now?

After what felt like hours, the door opened. Zoey jolted out of surprise, almost as if she were getting ready to retreat to the back of the room, away from the intrusion. The door closed.

"Miss Connor?"

It was a woman's voice. Deep, smooth, relaxing. Zoey didn't reply.

She heard foot steps approach her bedside, then faint sounds of the woman handling something. Suddenly, Zoey felt the woman's hands on her gown, untying the gap on the back. She jolted out of surprise but she kept her eyes closed.

"Miss Connor, are you awake?"

After a few seconds, she replied, "Yes."

"I just need to take a swab of your back. It might feel strange."

"Okay."

The woman finished untying her gown, then held it open. Zoey felt this strange fear come over her, like that infected woman would leap onto her back again and tear her asunder if she didn't watch her back. She thought of how fun those old movies were to watch, where the zombies would limp around with dead eyes and grey skin. It wasn't so fun to imagine anymore; all she saw were those teeth, all she could hear was that growl. All she could feel was the strange numbness in her back.

The woman's swab touched on her back and swept across it. Her back was numb, but Zoey could still feel the path the swab took. She almost screamed. Her back had become a country hillside of bumps and valleys.

"Oh my God!"

"Miss Connor, are you all right?"

"Oh, God, my back!"

"Miss Connor, you're just fine. I need you to calm down now—"

"What did you do to my back?"

"Miss Connor!"

Zoey was trying to thrash. She couldn't feel her body. Fear was coming back again.

She felt an odd sensation in her arm, sort of like feeling a car hit something else, like it wasn't part of her. Zoey was gasping and shouting, and she looked over to see another needle sticking out of her arm. The nurse pushed the plunger down hard. It felt like her veins exploded. She started to shout in pain instead of panic.

"Miss Connor, you're going to go back to sleep now," the woman explained, but it was already far off. She didn't catch the rest of the sentence.

* * *

"Ten o'clock!"

Everyone spun around, but they heard the odd explosion as Louis took a few shots at the strange infected man before they spotted it. Everyone knew what that sound was—one of the different infected, the ones that puked on everything, attracting hordes. That wasn't the only reason it was important to spot one before it got close—it's barf smelt like feces, urine, decay, death... everything unpleasant mixed into a flood of vomit.

"Man, did you see that thing _pop_?" Louis said enthusiastically, waving his SMG in the air. "That was like a goddamn water balloon! _POW_!"

"Keep yer voice down," Bill grumbled. "You don't know what'll hear you."

"There's nothing else around down here," Louis said, but he did get quieter. "Should we take a break?"

"Fuck no!" Francis barked back.

"I said pipe down!"

"Ah, go stuff a..."

"Francis is right, Louis," Bill started again after a second. "You know as well as I do that we can't stop out in the open."

Zoey was the only one who seemed alert. She slowly circled on the spot, watching the tunnel behind them, to the upper left, and beyond. Fear had nothing to do with it. She hadn't been afraid since the first few days of infection. All of them had accepted the epidemic with a flat complacency that appeared akin to a man on the job. Zoey was hit hardest of all by all of it, so she was the most docile, the most serious, the most contemplative. She was almost completely and utterly withdrawn.

"Yo, Zoey."

She turned around. "So?"

"What?"

"We asked you if you wanted some pills." Francis waved them in the air at her.

"No, I'm fine."

"You sure?" he asked. "We haven't found a safe house for hours now. I could use a cup of joe myself."

"I'm fine," she repeated.

It had hit her the hardest.

"Well, where to now?" Louis asked.

"North," Bill replied. "The service tunnel leads right to the entrance of the hospital there."

"Is that such a good idea? I mean, climbing up a manhole into an open street?"

"That or we wander around down here for a few more weeks lookin' for the back door."

"North it is."

"Zoey, how you holding up for ammo?" Bill turned to her.

"I've got plenty."

The four of them started moving up the tunnel. Zoey held her pistols in front of her as if they were her eyes, and she couldn't walk without them pointed forward. It was a dark part of the tunnel, so they all had their flashlights on. An infected man sat slumped against the wall ahead of them. Francis shot him with the shotgun. The man flipped head over heels before landing in a bloody mess a few feet away from where he sat. No-one seemed in any way bothered by it. Just another day on the job.

Bill was walking closest to her. He turned halfway around and looked at her, his unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. "How you holding up?"

"Good."

He watched her for a few more seconds, then turned around again. "Sorry."

Her eyes darted away from her pistols' aim only briefly. "What?"

Louis and Francis were chatting quietly a few paces ahead. They weren't listening. Francis laughed out loud, making sure to keep his voice down. Bill sighed.

"That was a pretty lousy question. Nobody's holding up."

Zoey didn't reply.

They made it to the end of the tunnel. A red light lit up the platform, reflecting off the metal siding to the passenger car that lay derailed in front of them. The doors were ajar, and the lights inside were open. A dead man sat on one of the benches, his inflamed head bent over himself as bodily fluid dripped slowly from his mouth.

_Just like a horror movie_, Zoey thought. _This is the part that's "Too quiet."_

Francis and Louis started moving up through the train, and Bill and Zoey hung back to cover the rear.

"You're too young for this, Zoey."

She didn't say anything. She thought she saw something move in the dark, but there was nothing. Just expecting something to be there.

"When we found you, and I first saw you, I expected you to break into hysterics. All you said was, 'Which direction are you headed?'."

"Yeah, I did."

Bill shook his head, but Zoey didn't see it. "Too young."

They passed into the next train. Louis took shots at another infected from beyond the window. Then there was silence.

"Are you from here, Zoey?"

She shook her head, then added, "No."

"Have family back home?"

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"Norwich. In New York."

"Small town girl?"

"Yeah."

Bill checked the windows, then led them forward. "Know if they're okay?"

After a second, Zoey sighed. "I don't know. Everyone I knew at school... everyone's gone. I don't know their chances."

Bill didn't look back. "I lost my family a long time ago. Had nothing left to lose."

They exited the train and came to the other side of the tunnel.

"You're too young for all of this."

"So you keep saying."

"Zoey, most people need a thing to fight for. Some of us don't know what that is."

She waited for him to continue, but he didn't. "What're you in it for?" she asked.

He slowed his step to look back at her. "I'm one of those people that don't know."

"Me, either."

"We'll still get by."

Zoey did know, deep down. It hadn't been long, but she'd already grown attached to all of their faces, their mannerisms, their voices. If they made it out of this thing alive, she couldn't imagine living her life without them ever again. She watched Bill's back as he hunted the dark corners, listened to Louis's laugh, felt a smile on her lips.

"Three o'clock!" Bill shouted, and they all spun on their heel.

* * *

Zoey woke slowly. She felt nauseated, like the world was sloshing back and forth in a giant aquarium. She was still on her stomach, but this time her back felt puffy and hot. It throbbed with every pulse.

This time, she opened her eyes.

The room was small and simple. She was the only one in it, save for the man sitting next to her bed. He leaned over into her field of vision; he had a large, square-shaped mask over his face, just like everyone else had. She felt like am animal with a tranq in her system; she tried to focus on him, but it was like playing darts in the dark.

"Miss Connor?"

She made a grunt of confirmation.

"I know you're probably scared and confused right now," he said, "but I want to assure you you'll be just fine. We're trying to help you get better."

_So you can run more tests on me._

"You're going to have to stay here for a little while on your own, though," he said, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She realized he was very careful where he put his hand. She was damaged goods. "Once we get you patched up, you'll be free to use the facility.

"Where are my friends?" she tried to say. It came out something like: "Wurmurfred?" Her tongue felt like a thick, soft turnip in her mouth.

"You just take it easy," he replied. "An orderly will be in soon to swab your back again. That RM1-C took a toll on you."

Then she recognized his voice—it was the same researcher who was talking to the other in front of her door, the one who claimed it was "each man for himself."

"We'll see each other soon," he said, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. She felt as if her skin burned there. They had her connected to computers and antibiotics flowing through her system, they had all the advancements and capabilities of a hospital, but she did not trust them. She was not going to like it here at Ripken stadium.

The door closed behind him, and Zoey's heart began to beat faster. The computer blipped next to her, picking up the increase in her BPM. They were watching her, her every move, her every thought. She was trapped between the monster's jaws.


	6. Six

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

Six

The three of them were slumped in a room that was hollowed out of anything it used to have when it was still an arena. Black lines could be seen on the walls by the faint light coming through the window on the door where the furniture used to be. They could also see the faces of the other people crammed in there, too.

"This is bullshit," Louis droned.

"No kidding."

Francis kicked at the empty pop can they let him take back into the building with him. He was awfully surprised they did that, considering they stripped him of his scrubs and hosed him down again like everyone else. "Must be carrying the virus." This time it wasn't water, though; it was some shitty smelling, bitter chemical that left them sticky and repulsive. "I feel like a fucking lab rat," he said.

"That's what we are, Francis."

"I got better treatment at my girlfriend's mom's place."

"Louis and a girl?" Francis said with a chuckle. "No shit."

"Yeah. Broke up a year ago. I never did forget her mom. She was Satan herself, I'm damn near sure."

"What makes you say that?" Francis asked.

"We went to her mom's house for Thanksgiving one time, and I stayed in the guest bedroom overnight. I woke up, got up to take a piss, and she was sitting in the corner with a hammer in her lap."

"Hah! Fuckin' right!" Francis jeered quietly, trying not to bother the other people in the room.

Bill smiled slightly. "Sounds like a charming woman."

"Yeah, well, anyway, she asks me in this real angry voice just where in the hell do I think I'm goin', and when I tell her I have to use the men's room, she cackles and says the hell I do, then brandishes the hammer at me." Louis straightened, then put on his best mocking middle-aged woman's voice. "'I'll sooner crush your family jewels before you sneak out to foul my daughter'."

"Christ on a pogo stick," Francis said, his shoulders rising and falling with controlled chuckles. "So what'd you do?"

"I pissed in my water glass."

"You what?"

"Pissed in my water glass. That's all she'd let me do. I was convinced she would actually pound the shit out of my balls if I got too close to her, so when I got ready to relieve myself in the glass, she just sat there watching me, nodding along."

"That's too rich, man," Francis said, rubbing his eyes while just biffing it into the palm of his hand. He was trying to stay quiet, but it looked like he was going to explode from the effort. _POP_!

"My old Pat was like that," Bill said. "She'd likely hunt you down with a .30-.30 instead of a hammer, though."

"Hey-hey, _Bill_ had a lady," Louis said, folding his arms over his chest and cocking his head to look at him. "Now _that's_ hard to believe."

Bill looked at him sideways, then scratched behind his ear where his cigarette used to be. "Yeah."

Francis's laughter died down to a small rumble. They were silent for a minute. "Sorry, man," Louis said quietly.

Bill shook his head. "Nah. Cancer got her in '78. She didn't have to see any of this."

They didn't say anything for a minute. Then Bill looked up to Francis.

"You had anyone waiting on you?"

"What?"

"A girl? Wife? Kids?"

Francis shook his head, then his eyes snapped. "Oh, what the hell am I talking about? Yeah, I had a wife. Ex-wife. Last time I saw her was... when I got out on parole. That was four years ago."

Francis fell short, then looked to the hem of his tunic. "She had a kid with her. He was around six."

Bill just looked at him. "Yours?"

Francis laughed dryly, still staring at his shirt. "Honestly, I dunno. Never asked. Back then I could care less, but now..."

Bill nodded. "Look like you?"

"No. Looked like her."

"Francis, Jr. Honestly, that sounds a little ridiculous."

Francis stared out into the room, then shook with another short chuckle. "Yeah, just like ol' pop. That'd be a nightmare."

Louis looked at Bill. "What about your kids?"

Bill went still and quiet again, and he started taking immense interest in his hands. "Daughter and I had a falling out after her mother died. Her husband called me three years later to tell me she killed herself. Postpartum depression."

"Ho, man," Louis said, letting out a long, low breath. "That's heavy."

Bill nodded. "I never met the kid. Name was Trish. Just like Grandma."

Francis cleared his throat. "Sorry, man."

Bill chuckled, shaking his head. "Lighten up. Next we'll be blubbering like pussies and clambering in a group hug."

Louis was quiet, but he looked around the room in such a way that suggested he really wanted to say something. Then he turned to Bill and Francis. "I know it's bad that I just thought of this when you said that, but where you think they took Zoey?"

Bill glanced at him. "Hopefully to a good goddamn doctor. Didn't you see how that thing tore her apart?"

"Shit, of course I did," Louis said. "But," he leaned closer, "where do you think they _took_ her?"

Francis went to kick at the pop can again. "Fuck."

"You guys, too?" Bill said.

"What?" Francis asked.

"You can throw 'em farther than you can trust 'em," he affirmed.

"Yeah. These guys... they give me the willies."

"You always see those movies where the government guys are the bad guys," Louis said. "Then in reality you keep on living with them. Armageddon happens, though, and you're SOL unless you crawl back into their arms."

"You be careful who you judge," Bill muttered, running his hand over his head, missing his beret again.

"'Hell with that," Francis mumbled. "These assholes just want us for their freaky experiments."

"You don't know that," Bill countered, almost tiredly.

"Why you siding with them now, old timer?" Francis said harshly, looking at him critically. "You were the one who was all 'Grr, don't let your guard down, ya scumbags'."

"Shut yer hole, Francis," Bill grumbled. "All I'm saying is you're quick to call them your enemy."

"You don't trust any of those guys, either," Francis said, raising his arms and letting them slap against his thighs. "You said so just a minute ago. Now you're telling us we should be best buddies?"

"No," Bill said. "Always be on your guard. Liking people before you know 'em is dangerous enough, but hating 'em just as soon can screw you over, too."

Francis shook his head, then sighed. "Well, then, what _do_ you think happened to Zoey?"

Bill slumped slowly against the wall, shook his head, then closed his eyes. He started fiddling with his hands again, wishing he had a cigarette to break and crush instead.

_I don't know._

* * *

There were no lights in her room. Did they do that on purpose, or were there no lights to begin with? She didn't know what time it was, what day it was. She'd been in that room so long.

They'd rotated her into a sitting position. Her back throbbed a little—the medicine was probably wearing off—but it didn't feel quite as puffy as before. That was either because the numbing effect of the anaesthesia was fading away, or because her back _was_ healing, and she wouldn't be as horribly disfigured as she once thought.

Zoey looked around the room. They'd removed the monitor from her, and she no longer had a needle sticking out of the back of her hand. Well, that explained why the pain was coming back. They weren't treating her anymore.

_They want to see what happens to me without medicine_, she thought. _Bastards_.

After an hour of silent brooding, the door opened. It was the same orderly who had come to see her when she first woke up. She looked like the Abominable Snowman.

"Miss Connor?"

"Yes."

"Just a minute of your time."

_Not like I'm going anywhere._

"How are you feeling?"

"A little on the itchy side. My back is starting to hurt."

"Yes, about that," she said, "we found you were having an allergic reaction to the anaesthesia, and we were forced to take it off you. We tried administering other pain killers, but your body is highly resistant to any of them. We've been swabbing your back to keep it as numb as possible, but it's been taking up a lot of our resources, and we can only give you so much."

Zoey suddenly felt she couldn't look the woman in the eye. She still couldn't fully trust them, even after the orderly all but offered up an apology, and she felt ungrateful for it.

"I see," was all Zoey could say.

"Would you like something to eat? To drink?"

"Yeah, I'm kind of hungry."

"Well, you're allowed to leave the wing now, so I can wheel you down to the mess hall. They're serving hotdogs."

Zoey smiled a little. "Actually, in that case," she said, "could I see my friends first?"

"Your friends?"

"I came here with three other men. I'd like to see them."

"Well, I'll do my best to arrange a meeting," the nurse replied, "but your friends are probably listed under another—er, recovery wing, and they might have different rules and regulations."

"'Recovery wing'?" Zoey asked, becoming alarmed. "They were hurt?"

"I'm not sure, Miss Connor," the nurse replied. "There were a few men who were injured in the attack, but everyone has been organized into different groups based on how much interaction they had with an infected. We have to keep everyone separated so that we can contain the virus properly."

Zoey choked back her fears. "Oh."

"They're probably okay," the nurse said, then sadly added, "you were the most severely injured in the crowd."

She looked away, then nodded.

"How about we get you those hotdogs first?"

So the nurse wheeled the portable bed through the halls, then brought her to a expansive hallway filled with empty tables and chairs. The same concession stand that had offered them roast beef sandwiches before had the same two cooks in masks standing behind the counter, putting the hotdogs together and stuffing them into foil wrapper. One of them looked up as Zoey and the nurse approached, and he nodded to the woman. "Hey, Penny. Came for some more meat?"

Zoey narrowed her eyes and let her disgust show. Either Penny wasn't bothered by his joke, or she didn't catch it, and she laughed airily. "Have another customer for you, Hank."

"Oh, a pretty one, too," he said, smiling at Zoey crookedly, though she couldn't see it. "Want some wiener?"

"I want a _hotdog_. Please."

The man looked her over for a second, either sizing her up for her attitude, or feeling heated in realization that he'd been making innuendos. "Certainly."

He turned away from the counter, picked a bun from an open plastic bag, and slipped a hotdog inside. "Everything on it?" he asked.

"Yes, please."

He returned with her meal, a fully dressed hotdog in the foil wrapper. Zoey was almost certain she'd never eat such a thing as a hotdog again. It had been so long, it felt like years... the smell was of the gods' nectar to her nose.

The nurse grabbed it for Zoey. "Apple or orange juice?" Hank asked.

"Orange."

He dropped under the counter and returned with a juice can. "I'd offer you more, but you're getting the last of supper tonight. Everyone else came by and picked the rations clean."

"That's okay," Zoey said, barely controlling her awe. "I'm fine with this."

Orange juice. _Orange juice_.

"Well, have a good night," Hank said to them, and turned away. Zoey couldn't help but think he sounded a little cut off, like she'd served him a plate full of guilt for his crude jokes. She started to feel a little guilty herself, because she was starting to believe that all of these people felt just as she did, and she was treating them with scorn and distrust that she shouldn't have been.

"Well, want to eat here?" Penny asked her.

_I want to disappear._ "No. I'd like to go back to my room."

"Sure."

Penny wheeled her down the halls again, and as they got closer to her room, they could see two men standing over a bed in the hallway, arguing. Someone with discoloured skin and dark, matted hair was lying still on it. The two men saw them coming, and one threw the sheet over the body quickly, but Zoey had seen what it was. It was the same infected who had attacked her.

Zoey was certain that Penny would take her back the direction they'd come, but she kept pushing her down the hall, closer and closer to the body. _I've seen plenty of dead bodies before. Get a hold of yourself, Connor._

"Penny," the closest man said cheerfully, pushing the bed to the side to let them pass.

"Hi, Colin."

Zoey held her breath as they passed. She stared at the body under the sheet, its bony limbs and claws jutting under the sheet, the dark colours showing through the thinness; only a weak barrier to separate it from her...

They pushed the bed in the opposite direction as Zoey and Penny passed, and an arm slipped from under the sheet, her blood dried on its fingers.

Zoey was barely able to swallow her scream.


	7. Seven

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

_May I introduce Frank, who was inspired by a character in Stephen King's _The Stand_, named Trashcan Man. Oddly enough, my favourite character in any of his books. Does that make me schizo, too?_

Seven

"Do you understand, Frank?" James asked, watching the shrivelled man carefully.

"Frank likes the boys."

James sighed, touching the front of his mask with his gloved hand. He glanced at his colleague, who held an equally exasperated expression.

"Do you know what you have to do, Frank?" James asked once again.

"Be nice to lady. Lady be nice to him. Frank likes Lady. Frank likes fire."

"Yes," James said, nodding along. "Be nice to lady, Frank. It is very important that you do this."

The man when to picking his arm, as if he were completely unaware that the thee men in hazmat suits sat around him. "Macmillan, do we have any MAO-inhibitor in inventory?"

Macmillan flipped to a page in his notes. "We do, sir."

"Have a small dose put into Mr. Mulner's and Miss Connor's food portions. I want all conditions to be favourable. Will you and Kischner be able to do this?"

"We'll inform the staff as well," Kischner said as an affirmation.

"Be discreet about it," James said. "Do not offer any details you don't need to."

"Certainly, sir."

* * *

When she woke up, she wasn't in the same place. There was a fluorescent light flickering on the far side of the room, and daylight came in from the hallway, but otherwise it was dark. She was lying on her stomach again, but there was no inkling of pain across her back. She reached behind herself to feel the damage and found that the swelling had gone down considerably.

_Good_, she thought. She sighed lightly, rubbing her numbed back. She'd certainly have large, ugly scars on her back for the rest of her life, but she had come to terms with that. There were worse things .

"Huh?" someone grunted sharply. Zoey gasped in surprise and lifted her head to scan the dark room to see if she could find the source of the voice. She caught the shape of someone hunkered down in the corner of the room.

"Hello?" she said. The person scuttled a bit, as if he or she were trying to be absorbed by the wall in order to get away from Zoey. Zoey didn't move or say anything further, and after a minute of silence, the shape stood upward and slowly came forward.

When the man stepped into the light, Zoey had to suppress a hiss. He looked like he'd been thrown into a meat grinder, but Zoey finally recognized the wounds as bite marks and scrapes. There marks on his cheek and his right eye—it was swollen shut—a few on his neck, and he sported a noticeable limp. The worst of it was his right arm—it had been charred from his finger tips all the way past his scrub's sleeve; Zoey started to imagine half of his entire body as crisped, just like a flame broiled steak.

"Lady," he said, his voice gravely. Zoey only stared back, unsure of how to respond.

"Are you okay?" she finally asked, looking him over. He didn't say anything. Instead, he looked over his arm, and started picking at his burnt skin absentmindedly.

"Don't do that!" Zoey blurted forcefully. He stopped picking, flinched, and stared at her. Zoey noticed that he stood with a hunch.

"What happened to you?" she said, propping herself on her elbows and eyeing him over with concern. He shied away from her a bit, twisting his arm over and over, as if looking for a new picking spot.

"Fire," he muttered, continuing to examine his arm. "Someone threw the bottle at me."

She thought this statement over. "A Molotov?" Zoey said, astonished. "Who would throw a Molotov at you? Why?"

He turned to her, his good eye wide and feral. She recoiled a bit, wondering what she had said to insult him. He ducked his head almost as quickly, though, as if nothing happened. "Too close to the zombies."

Zoey almost laughed out loud, but was luckily able to stop herself. _Now, why didn't I think of that_? Never had she thought of the infected as "zombies." The idea seemed absurd enough to joke about, but she kept quiet. It was obvious something beyond this man's wounds was inflicting him.

"Frank likes fire," he muttered. A piece of his burnt skin fluttered to the floor, and he bent over to try and pick it up. It glowed like silver in the sunlight. Zoey wanted to look away, but she kept talking to him.

"Your name is Frank?"

"Yeah."

"How did you get here?"

He looked up at her and cocked his head like a bewildered dog. "Walked."

"Did you just make it here?"

He looked at the floor again, and continued to try and pick up the flake of skin. He finally had it between his fingers, and he darted it into his mouth. "Yes."

Zoey did look away this time, then gulped. "Um... did you come in with others?"

He shook his head, dusting off the ground where the flake had been, then stood up in his hunch again. "No. Nope. Not for Frank."

If Zoey had met this man at the bus depot four weeks ago, she would have slowly inched away from him, hoping he wouldn't notice, and would just continue muttering to himself, not caring that another person had left him behind. But that was four weeks ago—Zoey found that she had absolutely no anxiety or judgment towards Frank—besides the slight queasiness at watching him eat his own leftovers.

Zoey slid her legs to the side, then sat up slowly on her bed. Frank was now inspecting his blackened fingernails. Some of them looked like they'd peeled off somewhere along his hike to the stadium. Looking down at him, Zoey felt every sad notion she ever held rise to the surface. She was frowning slightly.

"Are you okay, Frank?"

He didn't look at her. "Frank likes fire," he said, turning his arm over in the light again. Zoey sighed, then looked around. White caught her eye, and she craned her neck to see an empty bed beside her own.

"Don't you want to sit in bed?" she asked. He didn't answer. He went back to picking his arm.

Zoey was beginning to miss her friends in waves now; being stuck inside a room with a man who was incommunicable left her with a helpless remorse weighing down on her heart. It wasn't within her power to see them, but she wished she could do something. She tried counting on Frank again.

"When you got here, did they bring you to this room directly, Frank?"

He looked up, but not at her. His gaze drifted off somewhere over her shoulder. "They gave Frank a bath."

"And?"

"Then Frank had breakfast with the boys," he said, scratching his other arm. Flakes of skin still fell off his charred one. "Frank likes the boys. Frank likes fire."

It seemed unlikely, but the facility was small enough, wasn't it? "Who are the boys, Frank?"

He made a grunting noise, then looked at Zoey. "The boys."

Suddenly, Frank made a wild hooting noise, and spun around to sit in the dark corner where he had come from. When he hunkered down again, Zoey could see him picking at his skin once more. His arm was going to look like it was chewed up by a dog by the end of the day.

Zoey felt another wash of sadness—for Frank and for her absent friends—before she sighed gently to herself. Her eyes fell on her feet, and she decided she would try walking; no-one in the facility had given her the opportunity to walk around since she was attacked. With a little hesitancy, she got up on her feet, and took a small, wobbly step forward. She found her back too stiff to properly move around, and she pictured herself as a shuffling old grandpa in his pyjamas. Zoey giggled to herself a bit, but Frank took no notice.

Once Zoey had taken a few steps forward, she looked to the window on the door, and decided she would try and see what she could see from there. Twisting herself around slowly, Zoey shuffle-walked to the door, wincing at the odd, unnatural twisting feelings in her back that shot up and down her spine from time to time. After a few challenging shuffles, Zoey found herself at the door.

Zoey peeked out the window. It was empty; the only thing in the hallway was daylight, coming in from a single well window high up near the ceiling. No-one was there, and no matter how far she twisted herself from side to side, she could see nothing but golden-bathed cement hallway from left to right.

Without thinking about it, Zoey's hand tried the door handle. To her surprise, it twisted under her hand, and slowly creaked open a bit. Zoey stood looking at it, and it took her a few seconds to register that the door was unlocked and she just opened it. She could go outside.

A rush flowed through her, and Zoey took a deep breath and straightened her back. Rapid thoughts shot through her mind—oddly enough, the thought _escape_ was the most prevalent. Not just the room, but the entire stadium. Collect her friends, collect her things, and go. Get the hell out of Dodge. Go searching for greener pastures. But the moment passed, and the counter thought came to her: _Escape where_?

Regardless, the door was open, and Zoey wasn't going to let the opportunity go to waste. She shuffled back, then swung the door open slowly. It squeaked as it went, and she cringed, looking from left to right wildly, hoping no-one was around to hear the disturbance. When no-one came, Zoey relaxed and stepped into the doorway.

Empty for as far as she could see. The hallways curved with the stadium, plain and bare, nothing around. Down the hall to her right, however, were stairs to the actual seats. _They_ would be there, she thought. She gnawed on her lip gently, then made her decision.

Frank grunted from behind her.

Zoey turned to look at him. He was still hunched in the corner, picking at his injured arm. Despite her desire to get out of that room and find Bill, Francis and Louis, she found that she did not want to leave Frank behind even more.

"Frank, hey," Zoey said quietly, turning towards him. He looked up at her—rather, he looked just past her shoulder—then continued to investigate his arm. Zoey took one last shuffle step towards him. "Frank."

"Lady," he mumbled.

"Frank, do you want to go for a walk?"

"Frank walked a lot already."

Zoey faltered, then said: "You like walks, don't you?"

"Frank likes lady," he replied. Zoey thought she was losing an impossible battle, but Frank suddenly got to his feet and walked out into the hallway with his hunch. Zoey, caught off guard, tried to shuffle after him. He began walking down the hallway towards the stairs, and as Zoey desperately tried to keep up pace with him, he passed them by without so much as a glance.

"Wait, Frank!" she shouted in a whisper. "Let's go up the stairs!"

But Frank, wherever he was, did not hear Zoey. He kept lurking down the hall with his odd slouch, scratching at his arm and grunting to himself. As Zoey passed the stairs, she looked up at them longingly. She could see the double doors, the ones that had been locked on her when she tried to get inside, that led to the stands. She wanted to go up there, but she felt leaving Frank behind would be the cruelest thing she could do to the poor man.

"Frank!" she called again, but he did not slow or show any sign of hearing her. He was getting further and further away.

"Dammit!" she muttered. Her breathing started to pick up; she really wasn't in any shape to be hobbling around. She should have stayed in the dark room with Frank, she should've done a lot of things.

As Zoey continued her fruitless chase after Frank, she slowed by another door in the hallway and leaned against the wall. She tried to catch her breath, but she found she couldn't force herself to start walking again. After a few seconds, Frank began to disappear beyond the bend.

"Frank," she called quietly again. It was futile. Soon he went to far, and Zoey couldn't see him anymore. "That was brilliant."

Zoey looked in through the window of the door. Above it read "Employees Only" in blocky, bold, spray painted letters. The room, like all the others, was completely dark. She tried the door handle. It was locked.

Zoey felt she was ready to keep walking again, but as she shifted, she saw more of the room from a single beam of light bouncing off something shiny in the room. Zoey paused, then slowly shifted back, trying to find the angle again. The light began to shine once more, and she peered inside.

Lining the walls were gun racks. They were adorned with a wide variety of arms, big and small. On another rack next to that were small hand held weapons; Zoey could make out a few different knives, batons, bats, golf clubs, stun guns, hand axes...

An idea rushed into her mind, making her eyes go wide and her breath come out as a gasp. She scanned the gun racks again, and sure enough she found a shotgun, some pistols, an SMG, and a hunting rifle. Their weapons.

"_Our weapons_," she whispered, astonished. No civilians permitted with weapons on the premises. Surely, you understand.

For some reason, Zoey had the urge to break the lock and go inside to get them. In a brief and insane thought, Zoey felt she'd be returning to a state of normality if she could hold her weapons in her hands again; that cold, hard, bloodstained steel between her fingers. Normality. Wasn't this—the stadium, the researchers, the soldiers—wasn't this a return to normality? Wasn't leaving survival behind what the point was?

Zoey leaned on the door with her hands on either side of the glass, and when her breath fogged the window, she backed up. Suddenly she didn't feel anymore sane than Frank.

"Can I help you?" someone said from next to her. Zoey let out a little yelp and turned quickly towards the soldier. It was the same man who had escorted her off the helicopter. His mask was bulky, protecting himself from her. Zoey shook the thoughts away, stumbling over her words.

"Well—Frank—I mean, my roommate opened the door and left, so I came down here after him, but he got away from me too fast, and I just..." Zoey looked to the door, trying to make up an excuse. She had none. "I was a little caught off guard."

The hard, suspicious look in his eyes wore away, and he nodded. "Of course. Your roommate, where did he go?"

"Down that way," Zoey said, pointing over the soldier's shoulder. "I don't think he's all there, though. Go easy on him."

Something flashed behind the soldier's eyes, and he stared at Zoey heatedly. "Frank Mulner? Is that who he is?"

"I—wh... I think so. He said his name was Frank."

"Fuck," he grumbled, then darted away from Zoey down the hall.

Zoey watched him go, a growing concern and suspicion rising up in her. Apparently, people worried more about Frank than she would've thought, or he was far more dangerous than she could have assumed. Zoey stayed planted on the spot for a second, simply too shocked to try and make a second getaway.

When no-one else came down the hallway, and when she heard no evidence that Frank had been found, Zoey turned and headed back down the hallway. She passed the stairs, but decided against going up there. She'd been caught already, so she'd likely get into more trouble if she were caught "chasing after her roommate" somewhere else.

But just as she was about to leave the stairs behind, the doors above opened, and she twisted on her heel, expecting to see another soldier there eyeing her down and yelling angrily for her to get back to her room. What she saw instead was Louis's face staring down at her, slack jawed.

"Zoey?"

A broad smile brightened her face. Bill and Francis filed in behind him, looking down at her with similar faces. "Guys!" she cried.

* * *

The four of them quickly found a family washroom; the only private place with a lockable door where they could talk without being caught or interrupted. Luckily, the lights worked.

When Francis locked the door behind them, Zoey had the overpowering urge to hug one of them, all of them, at once, but she held herself back. She shuffled her feet awkwardly, fighting a physical urge to pounce them, and simply smiled at them with a face of desperation and thankfulness.

Louis gave her that brotherly look that he shared with her from time to time, then patted her on the back. "Am I glad to see you."

Zoey nodded. "Me too." She looked at the three of them, then realized what she'd noticed when they first stepped in from outside. "When did you get your clothes back?"

"Last night sometime," Francis said. "'Bout fuckin' time, too. Those scrubs were itchy as hell."

"Got a debriefing, too," Bill said. "Told us our rights, gave us a summary of the tests, tried to pull their heads from their asses, la di da."

"I haven't gotten much," she said, reaching for her back. "I don't know. These people... I've got nothing to be afraid of—they're helping me, as far as I can tell—but I can't shake the feeling... I don't know. I don't like them."

"Great minds think alike," Francis said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I think these guys work for the mafia, if you ask me."

"They didn't—hurt you or anything, did they?" Louis asked carefully.

Zoey turned around and lifted her tunic up enough to show her back. The three of them hissed.

"They've been trying to fix me up—this is a lot better than it used to be. But I..." Zoey paused, thinking on the conversation between James and Lyson. She dropped her top and turned to them again. "I think they're trying to experiment on us."

"What makes you think that?" Bill asked suspiciously.

"I heard them talking... our safety isn't their top priority. I think they want to use us to fuel their experiment, to understand the virus a little more."

"They fucking around with you, kid?" Francis asked, his voice rimmed with anger.

"I honestly can't tell," Zoey said. "Sometimes they seem to be, other times they don't. But when I try to tell myself that I'm just paranoid, I keep second guessing myself."

"You know what the worst part about this is?" Louis said. "I can't call my lawyer."

"Zoey," Bill said, his face even more stern than it seemed possible, "Do you have ways of getting out of your room at night?"

Zoey paused. "They've been leaving the door unlocked, but I think with my new roommate, they'll be locking it from now on."

"New roommate?"

"His name is Frank. Do you know him?"

"No," Bill shook his head. "Why?"

"He said he had breakfast with 'the boys'. I thought he might be talking about you three."

They shook their heads. "So why are they locking the door?"

"He's..." Zoey stumbled. She settled with furrowing her brow with a concerned expression; a you-don't-want-to-know look.

"Damn," Bill mumbled. Then, "Where are you?"

"They just moved me to a room down the same hallway as the stairs," Zoey said, pointing to the door to guide them. "Just a little further down from there."

"They've been keeping us in little communities the last few days, but now we're free to roam around again," Bill informed her. "We'll find a way to get down to your door at night."

"No," Zoey said, "don't do that."

The three of them looked taken aback. "What?"

"You'll just get into more trouble. Besides, what would you do when you got there?"

Bill looked at her hard for a second. "We'd get out of here."

_So, I'm not the only one who thought of it_, she thought. Her eyes lit up, and she scanned each of their faces. "You mean it?"

He nodded firmly.

Zoey licked her lips, then dropped her voice out of instinct; it was usual to whisper when one spoke about something he or she felt was detrimental. "Listen, I found where they're keeping our weapons."

"Where?" they asked almost simultaneously.

"The door labelled for employees, same hallway," she said, pointing at the door again. "The room's full of them."

Francis's smile was ever so slight, but his entire face lit up like he'd just heard the concept of Christmas for the first time.

"Right," Bill said, looking between them. "We're gonna have to plan this like real men—and women," he added quickly, looking at Zoey, "if we're gonna do this. Zoey, you're sure the weapons are down the hall from your room?"

"Absolutely," she said seriously, her eyes boring into his.

"Okay," he said, then hunched over like a coach would before a game. The other three huddled with him. "Let's put our noggins to work, then..."

* * *

Francis opened the washroom door, then paused. The others tried to follow him out, but he didn't budge.

"What's the hold up?" Bill growled impatiently, then looked over Francis's shoulder. "Oh, shit."

Zoey stood on her tiptoes to see over the others' heads, and she felt her knees go weak. She felt her heart palpitate, and she dropped back onto her feet again. Soldiers were waiting outside their door.

"Having a conference?" one of them asked. The others snickered only slightly. "Is Zoey Connor with you?"

The three of them stood there, and Zoey got the sense of a bunch of tough brutes protecting what was theirs. Zoey shuffled forward and touched their backs gently, encouraging them to move away. When they finally did, Zoey stepped forward a little. She held her head high, a look of anger on her face. "Yes?"

"Come with me," the soldier said impatiently, motioning her down the hall with his M16. Zoey watched it glint maliciously, then walked forward as asked. She wanted desperately to look over her shoulder to the three of them, but she couldn't. Part of her was afraid to see them being subjugated by the soldiers.

The man escorting her brought her back to her room and stood in the doorway briefly. Zoey shuffled around to look at him. "Please don't leave your room again," the soldier said firmly. "It's important that you stay in this room unless someone shows you out."

Zoey glared at him. "What's so damn important about me?" she asked angrily.

The soldier looked at her plainly, his expression hidden by his mask, keeping Zoey from reading his thoughts. Then he turned from her and closed the door. She heard a _chink_ as he locked it behind him.

Once again, Zoey was caught in the dark, and now she was locked in there.

"Lady," Frank said from behind her in his corner. "Frank likes lady. Frank likes fire."

Zoey shuffled up to the door, leaned against the wall for support, then kicked it with all her strength, screaming furiously.


	8. Eight

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

_*I've never actually been to Ripken Stadium; the set description of the stadium is based off of building plans I found on the internet, but which still leave a lot to the imagination. Specifically, my imagination!_

Eight

Bill was wandering down the small corridor, wondering on Zoey. Francis said he tried going down the hall that Zoey claimed to be staying, but it was empty. They'd moved her, probably because they knew the four of them were plotting some sort of escape, or because they were practising more bullshit experiments on her and her psycho roommate. He was a little but pissed off that their plans were thrown to shit, but he was more concerned of what sort of lunacy they were putting her through.

There were a few people sitting at the cafeteria near the concession that was open. Most people had their civilian clothes back, but some had been torn up so much that they wore clothes donated from the "Recovery Team". It was more like what was left over from years of the lost and found Ripken stadium never bothered to throw out. Most people ended up wearing tattered team T-shirts and hospital pants. Bill thought they looked like faggots.

"Hey, it's Vet!" one of the men behind the counter cried playfully to his coworker, his face glowing behind his mask. "Hey, Vet, you want a Sloppy Joe?"

"No," Bill growled.

"Okay," the guy called back, then muttered: "Fuckin' old balls."

The others chuckled a bit, and Bill grumbled to himself. Kids didn't change, not even after the world was over and done with. The only one of them who actually seemed to give a shit—no, who was matured beyond her years—was Zoey.

He passed the concession and started towards the next set of stairs he came across. Instead of heading up the stairs to go to the stands, he headed down. He never heard anyone mention that they couldn't go down there, and he figured there'd be no more good-for-nothing asshole kids around like Concession Stand Billy-Bob to annoy him.

It was cool and dark down in the basement. Electricity was limited to generators in the stadium—that was why some rooms were dark when others had light or medical equipment—so the hallways were dimly lit. It was a sad, grey cement slab down there, like a goddamn prison.

He hadn't had a cigarette in what felt like years, and he was starting to get pretty pissy over it. He was shorter than usual with all the dick-wad pansies running around the place, acting like they were... well, actually, he was pretty sure they were part of the army. But they weren't vets. None of them had seen duty like he had. Yeah, he was old, but he hadn't felt as alive as he had during the first couple weeks of infection since his discharge. Even the ache in his knee didn't exist when he was out in the open, firing a trusty SMG. It was invigorating.

"...bout the test subject?"

Voices floated up from down the hall, and Bill slowed in his step out of caution. He looked over his shoulder, just to make sure no-one else was coming, then he started to creep closer towards the door where the conversation came from. He had a gut feeling that this was one transaction he wasn't supposed to be eavesdropping in, which convinced him it was all the more important to listen.

"Yes... I was wondering: why did you pair the two together?"

"You're not authorized for that information."

"Cut the crap, James. You know as well as I that authorization means shit now."

"Just because there's no contact with headquarters and neighbouring facilities does not mean rank is irrelevant."

"So all those things you told me about Miss Connor was out of good humour and confidence, I suppose?"

Bill's brow knit tightly together, and he suppressed a growl as he shifted himself closer to the door. _Don't you be talking shit about her._

"Stop it, Peters."

"So what's your reason for not telling me this time?"

It was quiet for a moment. "The experiment is..."

"What?"

"Unethical."

It was quiet again, and Bill could feel his heart rate pick up. He was getting angrier the more he heard, and part of him didn't want to hear the rest. He was afraid of what he might find out. But at the same time, he was afraid of what he might not.

"What do you mean?"

"If I tell you this, Lyson, you keep it to yourself, do you understand?"

"Would it be my balls or yours?"

"Do you want to hear this or not?"

A pause. There was a scratch across the floor inside the room as one of them shifted their chairs.

"Let me start from the beginning," the man named James said hoarsely. "When Miss Connor was attacked by the RM1-C, we swabbed samples off of her, but we neglected her quarantine process—that much you already know."

"Yes."

"So, the day before yesterday, we took another swab..."

"...And?"

"We expect mutations to occur in a virus all the time; when the body is exposed to one, the immune system attacks it, and the virus changes in order to bypass the security, but eventually the body defeats it. In the case of the RMV, it mutates according to the victim's immune system, and either kills the specimen, or mutates its physical composure, depending on the individual's genetic makeup."

"Yes, thank you, James, I knew all that."

"Patience," James warned, then continued. "In the case of an immune individual, the virus enters the system, but cannot go any further. It dies the moment it enters the system. We haven't figured out yet if that's because of a specific enzyme the body holds, or because of a crucial protein the virus needs to feed off of to live."

"I thought we already determined it was an enzyme."

"And then we met Miss Connor and Mr. Mulner."

"What about Miss Connor?"

"She has a different type of immunity," James said. "The virus lives within her system, but it lays dormant. It does not seem to affect her cell regeneration, but we have seen that it has mutated within her."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. The interesting part is, we haven't seen this kind of mutation before."

They were quiet again, and Lyson finally asked: "So what does Mr. Mulner have to do with this?"

"He's not entirely immune."

"No."

"The virus is also in his system, but minor effects have occurred. His cell regeneration, unlike Miss Connor's, has been affected; his wounds cannot properly heal. We've been attending to them to keep them from becoming gangrenous, but our supplies are limited and the effects are only temporary. He has also become more delusional since we found him on the outskirts of the stadium. We have seen the virus mutating in his system, as well, and it keeps affecting him further. Ultimately, we... how do I put this?"

"What?"

"Since both of these subjects are only 'half-immune' in a sense—" James paused to clear his throat, "we want to see the results of close contact, and hopefully... and hopefully the development of a possibly infected embryo."

Bill's frown got deeper. It was silent in the room for a second, and it gave him time to think. He'd heard that word before—embryo—but where?

"You're not serious."

"We were hoping it would happen on its own, but it hasn't. We're increasing the amount of aphrodisiac each is consuming by tomorrow. No-one here has an extensive knowledge on what dosages to use, and we believe we have grossly underestimated the amount needed.

"That's why both of their files are under testing, and that's why the two of them are to be kept in closed quarters for the time being."

It was silent again, and Bill got the distinct impression that the guy asking for the story, Lyson, just had his socks shocked off. Bill's heart rate picked up again in anger, but he felt a lingering sense of panic start to build, too.

"I can't believe you're doing this."

"I'm not," James said flatly, "it is under our code of conduct that we take any options necessary to study the effects of the virus—"

"These are healthy human beings!" Lyson suddenly shouted. Bill heard his chair scrape back suddenly and fall to the floor. "Survivors! Isn't it our top priority to protect these people?"

"Not ours. That's the defence department's responsibility."

"You—_fucking bastard_," Lyson spat, and Bill's face lit up in surprise at the sudden outburst. "You're talking about _rape_, goddammit! You can't do that!"

Bill's face fell as the pieces suddenly came together. He remembered where he'd heard the word: it was from the doctor, forty years ago, when he told him and his wife that the embryo was just too weak to make it, and that's why she'd had the miscarriage—

He clenched his fists and he began to shake as he realized he'd been wrong about these people.

His rational mind told him that falling back and regrouping was the best strategy: gather the boys, find Zoey, and get the fuck out of Dodge. But the furious part of his mind urged him to bust through that goddamn door and wrap his hands around that motherfucker's neck and squeeze every inch of life out of him: the doomed frontal attack.

Before Bill could even reason with himself, he'd already knocked the door wide and was rampaging towards the asshole in the chair closest to him.

Bill's fist came back as an ugly grimace set on his face before he punched James in the face, cracking the pane of plastic on his mask. James stumbled back out of his chair with a muffled cry, landing on the ground, while Lyson, on other side of the table, let out a startled yell. Bill paid him no attention, and landed on top of James, who was now writhing on the ground under him, trying to escape, and started pummelling his face mask some more. It began to crack and splinter. Bill's fist was covered in his own blood; James's hands flew up to try and stop him. The mask broke, and he began to scream.

Bill had been so caught up in his own rage that he hadn't heard Lyson call for help, and the last thing he heard were soldiers' footsteps coming up behind him before the butt end of a rifle swiped him across the back of the head.

He lost control over his balance, and he fell towards the ground in what felt like slow motion. His vision dimmed in a flurry of sparks, and his consciousness was shrouded in a blanket of black.

_Zoey...!_


	9. Nine

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

_Nor do I own any parts of Samuel L. Jackson (hehe) and whatever company holds the rights to _Deep Blue Sea _or _Reservoir Dogs_. I'm just getting lazy now, but I'm confident you guys won't chew me out for it._

Nine

"Conspiracy theory, s'all this is," Francis muttered, picking at his nails. Louis took a sip of his soda and looked over at him. "Just a fuckin' conspiracy."

"Yeah, next it'll be the black man," Louis said with a huff. "It's always the black man in the movies."

"Bullshit," Francis said, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms. "What movie?"

"Every movie with Samuel L. Jackson in it," Louis replied, gesturing with his pop can for emphasis. "_Deep Blue Sea_. Ever see that one? Gets gobbled up, not even half way through the goddamn movie."

"Oh yeah, I remember that one," Francis said. "That was a pretty shitty movie."

"_Reservoir Dogs._"

"Sam Jackson didn't die in that one."

"No, but Marvin did," Louis said exasperatingly. "Went _splat _all over the goddamn back seat. And why? Because—"

"—They hit a bump," Francis finished, nodding. "Yeah. That was kinda funny though, you gotta admit."

"...Yeah, it was, actually."

"So you're sayin' these mojo fuckers are comin' for you next, huh?"

"They're not playing hide and seek, Francis."

Francis went back to picking at his nails, and rested his elbows on his knees. "Where do you think they took 'em?"

"I don't know," Louis groaned, deflated. "It's not like this place is huge. I don't know why we can't find 'em."

"I know Bill told us to fuck off when it came to these scientific types—the CEDA, or whatever. But I don't trust 'em _or_ like 'em, and I'm sure as hell they all have their dicks poised right over our a—"

"Misters Jenkins and Greyberg?"

Louis and Francis turned in their seats to see one of the scientific types standing behind them. His face looked drawn and tired behind his Plexiglas mask, and he held his hands in front of him as he fidgeted slightly. The two companions looked between each other, wondering on the others' surname, then turned their attentions back to the man.

"...Yeah," they both muttered simultaneously.

"I'd like to have a word with you both, if you don't mind," he said weakly, his eyes darting to the field where the military worked on the fortifications to the wall, then to the doors by the stairway.

Louis slowly turned to Francis, cocking an eyebrow. "See?"

"Hey, he came for me, too," Francis muttered.

"Excuse me, gentlemen?"

"Nothin'. Might as well talk with you, since we don't actually have much of a choice, do we?" Francis asked bitterly. "Gonna stun-gun me if I don't come quietly or somethin'?"

The man looked perplexed, and his jaw worked as he tried to formulate a response. "Gentlemen, I don't know what you've been talking about, but I just want a few words with the both of you, please." He looked back over the field, then said: "I might not try to harm you, but someone else will."

"What?"

"Please, just come quickly."

Louis and Francis slowly got up out of their seats and followed the man as he rushed for the doors, looking towards the posts like he had a nervous twitch. The two men had to rush to keep up with him, and when they reached the doors, he turned back to them and said: "Down stairs—I have an office."

So they descended the stairs right to the basement, and the suited man seemed to come down from his tense, panicky state. They followed him a few doors down to a small, plain room with a desk and two chairs. He moved them for Louis and Francis to sit at, then stood behind the flimsy, wood panel study.

"I understand you two are affiliated with Miss Connor and Mr Overbeck?"

"You mean Bill is Mr Overbeck?" Francis said with a snort.

"I'll take that as a yes," the man replied. "Listen, I don't know how much time I have. They might already be looking for you. Your friend Miss... Zoey is in a precarious situation, and Bill has been subjugated and is being held in solitary confinement. I'm here to tell you how to retrieve them and escape."

The two men sat dumbfounded in front of him, speechless and unmoving. "The hell you talkin' about?" Louis said quietly, looking at him with utter shock.

"I..." the man paused, licking his lips. "The director of the R&D division, James Ford, is taking his liberties, or lack thereof, into his own hands. He's going to try and impregnate Zoey for some research data. I'm afraid that no-one else is going to stand up and stop him in his tracks—he has the highest rank and the most seniority in this place—so I needed to warn you of what's going to happen so that you can protect yourselves and your friends."

"You're shittin' me," Francis growled. "I knew you bastards were a bunch of cock sucking—"

"Mr. Greyberg, please," the man said, "I'm just as appalled by this as you are. I've no doubt that most of the people in this building are vile, ruthless human beings, but I need you to listen to me in order to get you safely out of here."

"You're gonna kick us back out there?" Louis said, sitting ramrod straight in his chair. "We spent the better part of a month trying to get here, and you're saying we gotta leave?"

"Mr. Jenkins," the man said wearily, "I assure you, you have a better chance of survival out there with them than you do in here with us."

"Fuckin' hell..." Francis said, rubbing his eyes. "I can't believe this shit."

"Now," the man said, leaning closer on the table. "Some men are going to come for you as well and keep you in confinement because of your affiliation with these two individuals. They will predict rebellious nature from you because of Bill's actions—"

"Wait, what did Bill do?" Louis interrupted.

The man licked his lips again, then looked down. "Bill heard James tell me of his experimental layout with Zoey, and Bill attacked him. He broke his face mask, and..." the man sighed, shaking his head. "James may be infected. We don't know how long it'll be before he changes."

"Fu—ck."

"The head of the defence department isn't likely to be happy with Bill, or you, out of association. Therefore, you need to get out as soon as possible, and you need to do it quietly."

"So whad'you suggest?"

"I suggest you go to the Kids Zone and collect your friend Bill," he said, placing a key down, "and then you head for the announcer's box on the top floor and collect your friend Zoey." He placed two more keys down.

"These are the keys to their rooms; the department heads and the assistant directors each have them, along with some supervisors on staff. This third key is to the weapon's closet—it's on the main floor near the infirmary hall. Do you know where that is?"

"Where Zoey was being held," Louis muttered. The man nodded back.

"Take these keys, and _don't_ do anything stupid until nightfall," he warned. "Since it's Saturday night, the night security crew like to play cards on the field. They don't always keep a close eye on the people in the stands."

The two men eyed the keys on the desk. Then Francis said: "So how the hell do we blow this shit hole stadium?"

The man smiled slightly from behind his mask. "Through the front door, I suppose." He sounded amused, as if he could imagine those security level assholes being held at gun point as the four of them made their escape.

"How are we supposed to believe all that?" Louis tested. "How do we know you're not setting us up to get locked up, too?"

"Because, Mr. Jenkins," the man replied, "I've never known Hell until I worked for the Devil himself.

"Help your friend Zoey, and get to Bill before he's executed on impulse. Lay low until tonight. Don't go for the dining halls. Make yourself scarce as much as possible, because I don't know what their orders are, and I don't know what they'll do to you. And... I'm sorry it's come to this. I'm sorry that there's no true safe haven left in the United States."

Francis reached out slowly and swiped the keys off the table. "Likewise, pal."

The man stood straight, turning from the two of them. His hands hung limply from his sides, and his head hung low. "I'm not sure what fate holds for any of us."

He stayed quiet after that, and eventually Francis stood from his chair, Louis following. "We've received word that the military have taken matters into their own hands in Florida," the man said, gesturing in a vague southbound direction. "I'm more convinced they have your safety higher on their list of priorities than CEDA does. I'm also certain they have a much safer place down there for you."

Francis stood there, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "This sounds cheesy, but are you gonna make a run for it?"

He shook his head quickly, still looking at the wall. "No, I... someone needs to watch over the others here, make sure no-one will take up James's place and try to mutilate more innocents."

"Well... thanks, uh—"

"Lyson Peters."

"Right," he replied. Then he turned to the door, and the two of them left into the hallway.

"What the _fuck_?" Louis whispered so quietly, he nearly only mouthed it.

"I dunno, man," Francis said. "I wasn't expecting that shit."

"Well, what do we do?"

"We could make some changes to Bill's plan," Francis said, stuffing the keys into his pockets. "There's just the two of us, and even if they aren't expecting us, we could still make it work."

"So, what, I'm supposed to seduce the guard?"

"Like I said, changes man. Jeez, for a techie, you don't seem too fuckin' bright."

"Hey, up yours, Francine."

"That's a nice one," Francis said lamely. "We could just follow that guy's suggestions and form a new plan under that. Combine 'em, maybe."

"Hey, what were you two doing down there?" a soldier called, walking forward as he flagged them down. They stood frozen at the top of the stairs. "No-one's allowed down there."

"Nobody mentioned that," Louis said. "Why didn't you tell us of where we could and couldn't go?"

"Aren't you Mr. Jenkins?" the soldier said, motioning to Louis. "And you're Greyberg?"

_Oh, fuck me. _"What's it to you?" Francis said, his voice coated in venom.

"You two will come with me, please."

"What for?" Louis said.

"Back down the way you came—"

"I said, what for?" Louis repeated. "That form I signed stated my legal rights were still intact, and I wanna know—"

"For conspiracy against the safety of CEDA's refugees," the soldier said, ushering them down the stairs again.

"That's bull—"

"Quiet, or I'll shut you up myself."

Francis clenched his fists at his sides, but Louis was the one who attacked first. The man spun on his heel and landed his fist right on the guy's windpipe. The soldier fell back on the stairs, clutching his throat and trying to breathe in unsuccessfully. Louis towered over him and drew back his arm to punch him again, but Francis shot out and grabbed his arm.

"The fuck you doin', man?" Francis said frantically. "Calm the fuck down!"

There was a snap of a rifle and a scream from behind them. Louis and Francis stopped where they were, frozen like a couple of statues in an out of place setting.

"_Hands over your fucking heads_!" The soldier was a woman.

Louis and Francis raised their hands, slowly linking them behind their bare heads. The woman approached them, grabbed Louis by the back of his collar, then yanked him down the stairs to the bottom, pushing him to his knees. She patted him down, then shoved him over onto the floor with her boot. "Don't move!"

She went back up the stairs to drag Francis down the stairs in similar fashion, though she didn't drop him to his knees—he was bigger than Louis was, and far tougher looking. Francis held his breath as she patted his pockets, hoping she wouldn't find the keys...

She stuffed her hand down his pocket, and he cursed wildly to himself as she withdrew the keys and examined them. Her anger was almost palatable.

"_Shit_," Louis cursed out loud.

"Down the hall," she ordered gruffly, making Louis get back to his feet. They walked down the hallway together with their hands still hooked behind their heads, not even daring to give one another a sidelong glance.

"Skin head, last door," she barked. Then she grabbed Louis by the collar and shoved him into the closet on the left. Francis gritted his teeth furiously as he went into the dark room at the end. A half-renovated staff washroom.

"Now you really have charges to worry about," the woman said angrily, and slammed the door on Francis, locking it behind him and leaving him in the dark.


	10. Ten

_Note: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

Ten

Zoey paced in her room. They were placed on the uppermost floor of the stadium in the announcer's box. Hardly anyone came up there, and the windows were blacked out so she and Frank couldn't see outside.

They had finally given her her clothes back. They were going to dispose of them because of the tears, but Zoey argued with the nurse until she made sure they were returned to her. They were ripped, they had a few permanent stains on them, but wearing them made her feel better than she had since she arrived at the stadium. What bothered her now, though, was the fact that no-one had been up to see them since they woke up.

Even though their windows were blacked out, she could see sunlight pouring in from the skylights outside their door. She spent about an hour pacing once she knew for sure the nurse was late for them, and she became even more distressed when Frank hunkered down in the corner, rocking back and forth and clutching his head. He needed medicine, they needed food, and there was no way for Zoey to flag down any personnel to help them.

"You doing okay, Frank?" Zoey asked. It was a rhetorical question, and even in his dysfunctional state, Zoey knew he was aware of that.

"Lady," he muttered weakly, still clutching his head. He was starting to sound nasally, like he had a head cold. Zoey scoffed, not at him, but at the seemingly incompetent help they had to take care of him.

"Where is everybody?" Zoey said aloud, standing on her tip toes and peeking out the window. Nobody. Not even a door guard. She let her forehead touch the glass gently, then she sighed angrily.

"I don't feel so good," Frank said, letting go of his head and resting on his hands. He started to rock on all fours, moaning and groaning in his stuffed-up voice. Zoey walked over to him, resting a hand on his back.

"Frank, are you okay?"

* * *

Zoey and Frank's nurse was huddled in the small intensive care room that they both used to share, standing amongst almost half the personnel of the stadium around James Ford's bed. His head swayed from side to side gently as he moaned incomprehensibly. They all shot each other nervous looks as Lyson Peters gave the sick man another pointless shot to ease the pain. They all knew what was happening to him, and they all knew the inevitable. But no-one would voice it. The only person of high enough rank to give an order to terminate an infected patient was the man lying on the bed in front of them.

"James," Lyson said thinly, grasping the man's shoulders. He gave a delirious shout of surprise at the touch, then relaxed on the bed again, letting his eyes roll. His skin had taken on a light grey tint already, and his nose began to run profusely, spreading snot all over his lower face and into his mouth. He spluttered on it a bit as Lyson shook him, and he made an obvious effort to look Lyson in the eye.

"Is the virus contained?" James asked, his voice muffled and faraway.

"Yes, James, it was only you who was infected."

"Morning," he whispered back, then moaned loudly and beat his head back against the pillow. One of the women turned from the scene and left the room quietly, bursting with tears.

"James, listen to me," Lyson said, looking around the room before leaning closer and lowering his voice. "You're the only one who can give the order to end... this. I can give it, even if you are incoherent and delirious. If this goes on, the entire stadium could be in jeopardy. Do you hear me?"

James rolled his head back and forth, then said: "I don't want to turn it on."

Lyson closed his eyes and hung his head in defeat. His hands gripped the sidebars of James's bed tightly, and he tried to regain control of his anger. Then James snapped up halfway, held back by his restraints, and looked Lyson in the eyes.

"Has the subject responded yet?"

Lyson didn't reply, perplexed by his sudden outburst.

"Has Mr. Mulner completed the experiment for us?"

* * *

As Zoey laid her hand on his back, Frank's body seemed to roll backward from his spine before he wretched onto the floor. Zoey cried out and jumped back, avoiding the spray of vomit that splashed everywhere.

"Frank?" Zoey said carefully, keeping her distance. He shifted on to his knees so he could grip his head with both hands again.

"La—dy," he said, his voice quivering dangerously. "I don't feel... I..."

He looked at her then, his brow glistening with sweat, his face a pale slate grey. He had pale brown hair and matching eye colour that was washed with green, and when he widened his gaze at her, he looked dead.

He stood up, and she backed away.

"Frank?" she repeated quietly.

"Be nice to lady," Frank said. The soft quiver in his voice made her stomach lurch as she recognized something in his voice she didn't like to consider.

Zoey rushed to the door, partly out of fear from Frank and for her safety. She tried the handle, but it was locked.

Frank ran his hands over his legs, then started towards her.

"Frank, stay there!" she shouted forcefully. She started banging on the window of her door, hoping someone would hear her and come check on them. "God dammit!" she shouted.

Frank kept coming towards her.

* * *

"What's going on, you think?" Hugh asked the senior officer, Jim, as they walked down the hall. They were headed to go question two men that were caught in the lower levels of the stadium, apparently attacking Ben, another private. Linda, or Gorwhich, as they usually called her, marched ahead towards the storage closet. She'd been the one to catch them, and she was furious about it.

"I think Doctor Ford isn't holding up," Jim replied, not meeting Hugh's eyes. "Everyone's abandoning their post to see him."

"Oh, shit," Hugh said. "What do you think they'll do to that crazy bastard who broke his mask?"

"Shoot him. Or worse, kick him out," Jim said simply. "We can't have a citizen who puts the safety of everyone else in jeopardy by being violent. He'll have to go, either the way he came in or the way we show him out."

"That's too bad," Hugh muttered.

"Why?"

"Because, he apparently came in with that girl whose file is flagged. You know, the one that Dr Ford wanted to..."

"I guess it makes sense, now—why he attacked the doctor," Jim said as Gorwhich threw open the door and stormed inside the closet to drag the guy out of the closet. "I guess I'll make sure we give him the merciless way out."

"You mean shoot him?"

"That's exactly what I mean."

Gorwhich threw the guy on the floor, then headed further down the hallway to the employee bathroom. The guy on the ground wore black slacks and a dishevelled, white, button-up shirt. His red tie was loose and threatening to fall off—he kind of looked like he'd just stumbled home from the office.

Office Guy looked up at them as he got to his feet, giving a careful look of apprehension and contempt.

As Gorwhich led the second guy in front of them, Hugh stifled a laugh. The big guy, on the other hand, looked like the stereotypical shit-raiser. He wore jeans and a similar vest, and tattoos ran up and down his arms from wrist to shoulder. His head was shaved, and his slightly shaggy beard was a typical handlebar look that a biker would wear. The two of them didn't look like a practical team.

"Weren't these the guys we were supposed to detain in the first place?" Hugh asked quietly to Jim.

"I don't know," he whispered back, then stepped forward to look over the odd pair.

"Well, let me first introduce ourselves as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and we're here to present your eviction case," Jim said casually.

"Eviction?" the big guy asked. "The fuck?"

"For attacking an official on duty for your safety, we have every right to expel you from this facility."

"Oh, you fucking tards," he bit back. "This place hasn't done much but keep those infected fuckers off our backs. You've screwed us a couple times since we've got here."

"_Shut the fuck up_!" Gorwhich shrieked, planting her rifle in between his shoulder blades. His eyes widened and he raised his hands.

"A'right, a'right," he said softly, easing her off. Gorwhich kept her gun there. Then Office Guy spoke up.

"You guys don't believe in following policy, do you?" he said. "Our debriefing stated we'd be up against the panel here."

"That's us," Hugh said.

"That doesn't constitute a panel," he retorted, stepping forward. Hugh lifted his gun and cocked it.

Jim glared the two of them down, and they stared back, unmoving. "Now, have I got your attention?" Jim said shortly. "You've been considered a danger to this facility, and you're leaving."

* * *

James was breathing in raspy yells now, and a few more personnel had to leave the room out of fright. Lyson was trying to hold him down, afraid that the restraints on his wrists would break any moment.

"James... I'm going to order them to kill you now, do you hear me?" Lyson said. James only yelled back.

Lyson stared into his lost, distant eyes as they flickered around rapidly, feeling something akin to pity for a brief moment. Then he let go of James, and turned around to give the order.

James shrieked horribly, ripping the restraints from the bed and leaping up onto Lyson's back. The other man shouted, falling forward towards the guard, who pulled his pistol and staggered backward, firing his shots rapidly in succession. He only managed to hit Lyson, whose screams were silenced abruptly. James's feral eyes scoured the remaining personnel, and some screamed and fled out the door. The second man tried to draw his pistol while the other reloaded, but the infected had already pounced out the door after the retreating researchers, swinging his claws. The two soldiers cursed, then ran after him.

* * *

"Frank, you _stay back_, goddamn you!" Zoey directed, pointing an accusing finger at the deranged man. He paused, confused, his eyes pointing off to the corner of the room. But she knew he was studying her intently.

Zoey backed up a few paces, then charged the door with her shoulder. She smacked into it hard, and the door did not yield an inch. She tried again to no avail.

She looked at Frank again, who still stood where she told him to obediently, but his gaze was unnerving to the point she felt like screaming.

Zoey approached the bed and grasped the side rail, tugging and yanking every which way, trying to detach it and use it as a weapon. When it did not budge, she resorted to kicking at it. The bed slid on the floor under each strike, and eventually a piece of the railing broke from the top. It was the length of a baton and as thick as a pipe bomb, and it was plenty enough to break in the window. Zoey turned on her heel, howling as she came down hard on the window. Her weapon bounced off, no sign on damage whatsoever, and she stumbled. Regaining her footing, she held the handle bar like a bat and swung it at the window.

She stood so that she could keep her eye on Frank. He didn't move the entire time, but stood watching her with his eyes pointed at nothing. She wondered if he had made the connection that Lady could hurt him with the handle bar, or that what he was feeling was bad and he shouldn't approach Lady, or if he was just calculating his options. Zoey felt as if she were in a pot of boiling hot water, and each moment spent in the room with Frank brought more unbearable heat.

The window finally cracked and splintered. Her strikes became more fervent, and she growled with each smack on the window. She roared once more before pummelling the glass with all her might, then shattered the glass. She then held the handle bar like a pick as she punched out the remaining shards of glass. When the window was clean, she rushed forward and sought the door handle. It was locked from the outside as well.

_It must be bolted_, she thought to herself. Knowing there was no way of opening the door on her own, she stuck both arms through the window and hopped upwards, resting on her upper belly as she began to clamber through.

"Lady!" Frank called, rushing forward to her. He grabbed at her ankle that was dangling in mid air, and she instinctively kicked out, landing a kick thickly on his chest. He scrambled backward, and Zoey heard the thud as he fell to the floor. She gripped the door handle and used her other hand to push herself forward, her every muscle burning as she tried to climb out the window—

She fell forward suddenly, and she braced herself at the last second, landing on her forearms. Her feet toppled over her head, and she landed heavily onto her back, causing the wind to be forced from her lungs momentarily. "Lady! LADY!" she heard Frank scream horrifically behind her. "Don't leave me Lady!"

Zoey got to her feet and caught sight of Frank crawling up through the window after her. He reached out for her, but the door kept him at bay; he seemed unable to climb out the window as easily as she had. Zoey watched him with a mix of disgust and alarm before rushing down the hall to find help.

"_LADY_!"

"Hello?" Zoey called. She found the stairs and started climbing down, leaving Frank's anguished screams behind. When she descended the steps, however, she heard more heated shouts from below. She froze on the stairs, listening. A few gun shots rang in the hallways, and Zoey felt a shock run through her as she saw a team of researchers running through the hall below her, chased by James in a patient's smock. He was squealing like an infected.

"Lady!" Frank called, his voice echoing not far behind her. He had managed to climb through the window.

Zoey whipped around only briefly before racing down the steps. She couldn't be sure what Frank would do when he reached her, but she also knew that he was significantly bigger than she, and any confrontation would probably end in her losing. When she got to the bottom, she looked down the hall to the right where the researchers and James had disappeared, when she was knocked off her feet from the left.

She landed heavily with a grunt, and she quickly tried to get back to her feet to fend herself off from whoever—or whatever—it was. She stood up to find herself face to face with a soldier. He readjusted his face mask while glaring her down.

"Get back to your room!" the soldier screamed at her. "The building's under lock down!"

"What's going on?" Zoey asked, but the soldier ran past her. They were in disarray. Suddenly, she was struck with an idea.

She heard Frank's steps on the stairs above her, and without looking back, she rushed for the weapons closet.

* * *

Bill looked up from where he sat to the window by the door. He was in a colourful kids' room, with toys scattered everywhere and a large plush-toy like castle in the far corner. He'd been bouncing a ball up against the far wall for the past few hours, and nothing had happened until he heard a distant shriek and a few rounds of a rifle go off.

He stood slowly from his spot, creeping towards the window to look outside. Nobody was around, but he could still hear the distant wails. It was an infected.

"Oh, _fuck_," Bill growled. He reached for the door handle, jiggling it to test the lock. Then he backed up, readied himself, then took a kick at the door. It jarred under his boot, and he regained his balance, kicking it again.

"God—dammit, open—up!" he growled with each kick. After the eighth try, the door swung open, and Bill staggered into the empty hallway. There was shrill screaming in the distance, coming from the front. Bill grimaced and started to run towards it—that's where the weapons closet was, and that's where he was going to go, dammit.

He knew he'd find only soldiers there—he'd even more likely come face to face with the infected first—but that was where the weapons closet was. Even if he couldn't break into the room to get his trusted weapon back, Bill considered himself a tough son of a bitch. He'd seen enough blood getting here, and he'd see more going out, that was for damn sure.

Bill rushed around the curve of the hallway to the front, then stopped abruptly.

* * *

The fire alarm sounded. It rang in the hallways, and a long, drawn-out wail emitted from the speakers all around the field, both outside and inside the halls. The two guards (Tweedledee and Tweedledum) looked up towards the ceiling, listening to the blare of the fire alarm from the basement. Francis and Louis looked to each other, and both of them shared glances that expressed surprise of their genuine luck and their unfortunate circumstances.

"What is that?" Tweedledum asked.

"Let's get up stairs," Tweedledee said, rushing back while Tweedledum followed. The last soldier stayed, leading Louis back to the closet.

"I don't want any trouble out of you two while they're gone," she said gruffly, shoving him in. Louis landed back on the floor where he'd settled before, crashing into some mops and buckets. As she turned around to lead Francis back to the washroom, he came up behind her suddenly and grabbed her gun, pulling it out of her grasp and throwing her to the side with a shove. She cried out in surprise, stumbling back over her feet.

"Sorry, lady," Francis said, pointing the rifle at her. "I don't usually roughhouse women, but you make a changed man out of me."

"You bastard!" she said vehemently, glaring up at him from the floor. "We're in a crisis, don't you understand?"

"Well, yeah, people act out in crises," Francis said, motioning for Louis to come out of the closet. "That's why I'm holding you at gunpoint. On your feet."

The woman got up slowly, glaring daggers at Francis. "If you've got any other arms, I suggest you give them to my pal here, for safe keeping."

The woman pulled her pistol from its holster, then held it upside down for Louis to take. He grabbed at it tentatively, then checked the clip. "Got any extra rounds?"

"One," she replied angrily, detaching it from her belt and handing it to him. Louis took it and stuffed it in his own pocket, then nodded to Francis.

"All right, if you've got a knife on you or somethin', I suggest you pull it out," Francis said, motioning her forward. "I expect we're gonna have a lot of company in a couple minutes."

"What are you talking about?" she snapped.

He let the sound of the fire alarm blaring surround them for a moment. "It's party time."


	11. Eleven

_Sorry for the eleven emails in your in-box right now, telling you eleven new chapters are up of a two year-old story. I revamped this bitch! _

_I would recommend reading this story from the beginning, if you haven't got that note already. Zoey's character has undergone some significant changes, as well as chapters ten and eleven (this one). Small fixits have been applied where needed throughout the story._

_As in the spirit of disowning: I do not own VALVe or any of its affiliates. Consider this a disclaimer to the characters/themes/what have you presented in this story._

Eleven

Zoey skidded to a halt in front of the weapons storage, jiggling the handle frantically. The door was locked as it was before. She still held the makeshift pipe in her hand, and she started to beat in the glass, hoping she could crawl through the window like she had her own door to escape Frank.

She heard rapid footsteps nearing her from further down the hall, and she looked up to see if it was Frank approaching her. Her eyes widened just before they collided, and she flew off her feet and leaving her winded. She landed heavily on her back, and before she could collect herself, Frank was on top of her, swatting at her face and neck.

"You left me!" he shrieked. "You left me you left me _you left me_!"

"Get off me!" she shouted, trying to stop his flails. When it became apparent she wouldn't be able to fight him off in her position, she quickly searched the floor with her right hand for the pipe she dropped when he knocked her off her feet. Her fingers brushed its edge, and she took it in her grasp before she brutally swung it against Frank's temple.

Frank slid off of her like a rag doll, and she abruptly stood up and made for the door again. She hammered on the window, both hands wrapped around the pipe, grunting with each strike. She kept Frank in the corner of her eye, watching him weakly writhe on the floor. She hoped she could break the window in before he regained consciousness and pinned her down for good.

The window finally cracked, and she earnestly beat it in until it the pieces ripped away from the frame and the majority of the window shattered. Zoey picked away the sharp edges again, then tossed the pipe inside the room before she made to crawl inside the closet.

She landed on both her hands and shimmied her feet inside before landing in a crouch. It was pitch black inside the closet, but from the light filtering inside she could see a lighter sitting next to a bottle of gasoline.

She swept up the lighter in her hand and snapped it on. A smile lit her face once she saw the racks of assault rifles, SMGs, handguns, hand axes and baseball bats. _Weapons_, she thought with a flood of morbid relief.

Frank was at the door with incredible speed, stretching his arm as far as he could go to try and reach Zoey. She staggered back, even though she was already out of his reach, and placed a hand on the bottle of gas.

"You know what this is, don't you, Frank?" she said threateningly.

"Fire!" he shouted in a strangled cry. "FIRE!" He didn't seem to let up in his desperate attempt to swat at her.

"I'm not afraid to use it on you if you don't back off," Zoey warned again, lifting up the bottle to the lighter. She actually had no intention of throwing a Molotov cocktail in Frank's face, especially at this close range; she would trap herself in the closet and be killed in the process. But she was hoping the memory of being set on fire would stab Frank with a cold jolt of fear. He only seemed more feverish to get his hands on her than ever, though.

Satisfied that he wouldn't be able to get into the room while she was there, Zoey began collecting her weapons. She placed the lighter back on the table with the Molotov cocktail before she stuck a pistol in the back waistband of her pants, slipped a hunting knife in the leg brace on her left thigh, and took a sniper rifle into her hands from the racks. Stuffing as much ammo in her pockets as she possibly could, she readied to threaten Frank away from the door so that she could leave and start to search for her friends.

When she turned around, she saw the door to the closet was wide open, and Frank stood there in the middle of the floor.

Zoey gasped sharply and spun around to aim the gun at Frank. She had been so surprised that she barely gave herself time to think, so surprised that she didn't pause to register that he was just standing there, holding the lit lighter lovingly, a mesmerized glaze to his eyes. Just before she pulled the trigger, he quietly whispered, "Fire."

Zoey also didn't give herself time to aim. The first spray of bullets pierced the wall just over Frank's head. She tumbled backwards from the force of the recoil, nearly flailing her gun in the process. Bullets went everywhere—one grazed Frank's right shoulder before shooting into the wall, causing him to drop the lighter. Just before Zoey let go of the trigger, one of the bullets shattered the bottle of gasoline that stood right next to Frank.

What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion. Her eyes widened and her pupils dilated as the lighter set fire to the flecks of gasoline that flew through the air before splashing on Frank's clothes. Within seconds, he went up in a tower of flame. The fire ripped the air as it swallowed him whole; it seemed like the loudest noise in the world before Frank let out a shriek of sheer agony.

Zoey scrambled backwards, her mouth gaping in shock and her eyes bugging wide. Frank flailed around helplessly, his scream running daggers through her mind. She covered her ears and screamed incoherently back out of fright. Frank fell over in the doorway, trying to roll around to put the fire out, but there was too much—it nearly covered every inch of him.

Frank squirmed out into the hall and disappeared from view. A few things had caught fire from Frank, but they were candlelight compared to the forest fire that engulfed him. His scream was still terribly loud, however, and it was as if the bright flames were still in the room with her.

The door frame had caught fire, and she didn't notice until it was too late that she wouldn't be able to get out without catching fire herself.

She tried to scream, but Frank's trumped her own, echoing in the hallways with a shrill shriek.

* * *

"God—dammit, open—up!" he growled with each kick. After the eighth try, the door swung open, and Bill staggered into the empty hallway. There was shrill screaming in the distance, coming from the front. Bill grimaced and started to run towards it—that's where the weapons closet was, and that's where he was going to go, dammit.

He knew he'd find only soldiers there—he'd even more likely come face to face with the infected first—but that was where the weapons closet was. Even if he couldn't break into the room to get his trusted weapon back, Bill considered himself a tough son of a bitch. He'd seen enough blood getting here, and he'd see more going out, that was for damn sure.

Bill rushed around the curve of the hallway to the front, then stopped abruptly.

There was a man flailing around the hallway, roaring like a banshee. The only thing that wasn't on fire was his face, which was contorted in such a way that he was more terrifying than any infected Bill had ever seen.

"Shit," Bill muttered weakly, stepping back. The flaming man got to his feet and ran at the wall, colliding with it and nearly falling over again. Bill watched in abject horror as the man reached out for him, kicking and screaming and writhing.

"_FIRE_!" the man shouted. "_FI—IRE!_"

He somehow got to his feet again, and ran at the opposite wall, as if charging into things would put out the fire. Bill was stunned motionless, watching the man throw himself around wildly until the sparklers from above suddenly went off, followed by the fire alarm.

A blaring noise filled the hallway. Bill covered his ears and looked around frantically. _Shit_, he thought. Loud noises were never a good omen for non-infected individuals.

The thought of the infected reminded Bill of why he had run down the hall in the first place. The door to the weapons closet was just around the corner. He rushed past the flaming man who flailed helplessly on the ground, his screams mixing with the blare of the fire alarm. When he rounded the wall to the door, he leapt back in surprise; the door frame was on fire, as well as a few random objects just inside the room.

"Dammit!" Bill growled, dancing subtly on his feet as he considered his options. The infected would be inside the stadium at any minute, sweeping the halls like locusts. He had to get inside to arm himself, but he was starting to doubt whether or not it was worth it.

Then part of the wall inside went up in flame; he heard the fire roar as it swept across the room. From underneath the rip-roar, he thought he heard a scream—Bill paused and held his breath, searching for the sound again amidst all the noise. "Zoey?" he muttered to himself, hoping he was wrong.

He heard someone cuss from inside, and then he knew without a doubt that it was Zoey trapped in the weapons closet.

Bill quickly threw his coat off his shoulders and pulled it over his head. He ducked low and darted through the doorway, hoping he wouldn't catch on fire. He collided thickly with the table immediately across from the door, bumping a few flaming objects to the ground. Zoey shouted out in surprise, and Bill peeked out at her from under his jacket to see her training a hunting rifle on him. "Are you injured?" Bill shouted over the fire.

"No!" Zoey called back after a hesitant pause.

"Then get up! We gotta get the fuck outta Dodge!"

Zoey scrambled up to her feet and made to grab for some weapons in the room. Bill swept his coat off his head and followed her example, stuffing guns and blunt objects under his arms and slipping grenades and Molotovs into his pockets as fast he could. When both were sure they couldn't carry any more, Bill motioned to Zoey and clumsily slipped the jacket over his head again. Zoey ducked underneath it with him. If they stayed a minute longer, they would be on fire themselves.

"We need to take this fast," Bill said. Zoey nodded rapidly, eyeing the doorway with a mixture of surprise and fear. She was like a kid thrown into war. Bill felt a momentary tug at his heart strings as he realized again that that was exactly who she was. Too young.

"On three," he growled. "Three!"

Zoey let out a war cry as the two of them darted through the door clumsily, their arms occupied with weapons and their heads bowed underneath a flimsy jacket that was to protect them from the fire. When they cleared the door, Zoey hit the deck and Bill dropped his weapons, yanking the jacket off his head and flailing it about, making sure it was free of fire. The sprinklers from above soaked him instantly, and whatever fire may have been there was put out. Zoey pulled off her sweater and covered the guns on the floor, trying to keep the gunpowder from getting wet.

The flaming man he had run past earlier seemed to give one last strangled cry from around the corner, and Zoey gasped, jumping to her feet and swiping a bat from the floor around her. She jogged forward, pointing her bat outward, ready to take a swing.

"Zoey!" Bill called out, trying to stop her. But she was determined to see whatever it is she wanted to see. From the curve of the hallway, Bill couldn't see the burnt man, but he could see Zoey standing there, looking him over. First her eyes fell, then her shoulders, her arms. She let the bat go and it clattered on the ground. Her jaw hung open agape. Zoey had seen many people die—infected, anyway—and her reaction was something he would have expected of her the first time she killed one. Not now.

"He didn't deserve it, Bill," she said, clenching her fists. She bowed her head and turned it away, making sure he wouldn't see her. It continued to rain down on her, and her shirt stuck to her skin, her hair dripped with wet, her body shivered under the cold. She clenched her fists and shook her head. "They did this to him."

She didn't need to know what Bill had heard to know that. But the flaming man seemed to have attacked her—the window was smashed in, the closet was on fire, she was trapped in a corner, and it was deducible she'd been herded there by him. To see her grieve over him... Bill felt he didn't hear the entire story from the scientist. She'd grown attached. Maybe what they were planning wasn't rape after all.

"Zoey...?"

A howl travelled down to them from up the hall. Both of them snapped to attention; they dived for their respective pile of weapons, each opting for a melee weapon to arm themselves with. They watched the curve of the hallway carefully, waiting for the onslaught of the horde to hit them.

"Ready?" Bill asked.

"Ready as I'll ever be," she replied bravely.

"Hey, you guys!"

Bill and Zoey looked over their shoulders to see Louis waving at them with Francis and a soldier trailing, a knife in her hand and heat in her eyes. As they approached, Francis gave Zoey a once over with a double-take. She eyed him strangely and he quickly looked away to Bill.

"You made it!" Louis declared happily.

"One more day," Bill grunted, glaring up at Francis. "'Bout time you showed up. You ass."

"Save it, old-timer," Francis shot back. "You're nothin' without Fancy Francis."

Bill gave a ghost of a grin and cocked his head toward the pile of weapons. "Better grab somethin' you can smack with; guns won't work too well in the rain."

"Righ'," Francis said, passing by Zoey (while pointedly avoiding looking at her) and rummaging through the pile with Louis. Bill and Zoey turned their attention to the woman wearing the commando gear and the heavy-duty face mask.

"Don't say a word," she growled. "I'm pissed off as it is that you four are staging a coup."

"This ain't no coup, lady," Bill said. "We don't want your stinkin' government."

"Especially if poisoning people is your way of keeping us safe," Zoey added with venom. Before she could add more, a distinct sound caught her ears. She twisted around on the spot and cried: "Incoming!"

They were approaching—she could hear them just outside the stadium. They were charging the place from all sides: the field, the parking lot, the road. They were surrounded, and those things would keep coming for miles. Zoey held her bat like a sword and stood valiantly like a Valkyrie. She hadn't a shred of fear in her; that bat would hold her out until the swarm was dead, God dammit.

Francis and Louis backed up into line with Bill and Zoey, and the soldier stepped up behind her. Each of them branded a blade or bludgeon defensively, readied for the onslaught that approached. The first of them that turned was the soldier; she spun around and shouted in surprise as a mob raced towards them.

Zoey could almost see them in slow motion—over her shoulder, the infected stampeded through the curved hall, their jaws slack and their tongues flailing—in front of her, another horde approached, led by the shrieking doctor who had put her in her predicament in the first place. She stepped forward as the others formed a haphazard circle to guard from either side. Bill pulled a pipe bomb from his deep pockets, calling, "Fire in the hole!" and threw it underhand in a soaring arc over the group behind them.

The infected veered in their path and struggled against each other to get at the flashing red light and the high-pitched squeal coming from the explosive. The horde opposite began to charge for the bomb as well, but the few infected that were headed straight for Zoey kept charging forward towards her. The infected doctor drew back his clawed hand to swipe at Zoey as he came within a few feet of her. She bared her teeth momentarily before winding back her baseball bat and smacking him across his temple. He spun around once before falling to the ground with dead weight. Before he even his the floor, Zoey raised the bat over her head and brought it down over a woman's crown.

The five of them punched, slashed and smashed at the infected that swarmed them. They were spaced enough that not one of them was overwhelmed at any time—it helped to have a fifth hand on deck to keep the bastards at bay. Blood began to pool at their feet, mixing with the water spurting out from the sprinklers above. The bodies were piling up around them, too, and they were forced to spread out further, widening the gaps between them in order to make room for more corpses. Just as Zoey's bat was starting to crack and snap, the onslaught thinned to a trickle. Zoey stepped into her last swing and struck the last infected in sight right across the nose. He went airborne for a moment before landing in the pile of dead at her feet. She drew her wrist across her forehead, wiping away the water, sweat and blood that collected on her face, and panted to catch her breath.

"Let's get a move on," Bill ordered, dropping his axe and crouching over his covered pile of weapons. Zoey rushed over to her pile as well, throwing aside her sweater and rummaging trough the guns. She tossed an SMG towards Louis and a shotgun up at Francis, who fumbled and nearly dropped the weapon. Zoey threw him an impatient look as she reclaimed her hunting rifle.

"I've got extra ammo in my pockets," she said, picking up her soaking wet sweater and handing it to Francis. He snatched it from her without so much as looking at her and jammed his hand into her pockets for the shells. Once he had them, he handed the sweater back to her.

"There. Now put this thing back on before your shirt dissolves."

Zoey gave him a cross look before glancing down at her very wet, very see-through tank top. Without a word, she pulled the sweater on quickly and turned away from Francis, fuming with anger and embarrassment.

"Hey, got any clips for me?" Louis asked. Zoey automatically dug into her pockets and withdrew some ammo for him, avoiding eye contact with him as well.

"Well, blessed-be the one who pulled the fire alarm, that's all I gotta say," Francis said, readying his own gun while being sure to keep it away fro the sprinklers. Zoey flinched and cast her eyes downward. "This is gonna be the best fuckin' thing to happen around here since roast beef sandwiches."

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with you people?" the woman cried, looking at them all incredulously. "There's an army of infected storming this place, and you're having a goddamn _celebration_?"

"Hey," Louis said looking at her lamely, "I'd rather picnic with them than you. Just sayin'."

"You're all fucking insane," she said, her voice trembling. "You're all gonna die, along with everyone else here."

"Fuck you, lady," Francis said reproachfully, cocking the shotgun with extra emphasis. "Your big scientist pals wanted to screw with our lives like nobody's business, 'kay? Far as I'm concerned, getting outta here is like finally checking out of the Hotel California."

"Do you realize what you're doing? This isn't just about you. There are other people here who are unarmed and unprotected! You're jeopardizing the safety of everyone else here!"

"And you weren't?" he retorted. "As far as I'm concerned, me and my pals here are Father Christmas, and we're here to give everyone a fair chance for their lives, which is more than you can say, believe me." He swept an SMG off the pile of guns and handed it to the soldier, who glared back at him evenly.

"You put us through a lotta hell in here, you know," Francis said.

"It isn't just about you," she repeated evenly, then grabbed the pistol. "Or me. It's about a collective, and you've ruined it."

Zoey's heart began to hammer in her chest, and her anger boiled dangerously under her skin. "If rebuilding humanity means breaking each individual down to nothing, then count me out." She held out a magazine for the soldier, her eyes ablaze. "If you're gonna come with us, then shut that hole in your face, or I'll shut it for you." Zoey snapped at the woman. "They tried to destroy me completely, and that's something less than human."

The soldier still glared back, but something in her face had been stolen by Zoey's words. It seemed she stopped breathing, or a part of the life had just disappeared from her eyes. There was a loud roar and a boom from outside, and all five of them turned toward the sound.

"We'll deal with this later," the soldier said quietly. "Right now I think we should leave."

"Lady's got a point," Bill said. "Move out!"

The five of them jogged down the hallway towards the front doors of the diamond. As they rounded the slope towards the entrance to the parking lot, another reverberating boom shook the walls and threw the five off balance. Zoey stumbled and straightened, her body instantly becoming alert. The wall shook again, and Zoey hopped back a step, preparing to run.

"Run and shoot!" she hollered just before the wall broke in, dust and debris flying everywhere as the hulk-like infected tumbled into the hall. As she passed her old pile of guns, she threw the strap to the hunting rifle over her shoulder and flipped it onto her back to grab hold of two pistols. Blindly hoping there were rounds inside them already, she switched off the safety and twisted on the spot, firing behind her as she ran.

"Up through the stands! I'll hang back!" the soldier shouted as she fired a round off at the juggernaut. The infected seemed disoriented; it hobbled off track like a drunk as it tried to chase after the five of them. More soldiers poured in from the hole in the wall, firing off rounds at its back.

No one wanted to argue: they bolted up the wrought iron stairs after Francis before the infected reached them. It staggered sideways into the stairs, snapping the bottom half as if it were made from tin foil. They all stumbled on the stairs, and Francis lurched onto the platform in front of the doors, making sure Louis and Bill got up behind him. Zoey leapt up the last of the steps as the monstrosity below tore the stairs down from the wall.

Louis burst through the double doors, the others following. The stands and the field were filled with infected and survivors alike. It was a swarm of rage. Bill stepped up next to Louis as an infected came charging them. He threw an upper cut with the butt end of his rifle, knocking her against and over the railing.

"Six o'clock!" Zoey called. They all spun around, glancing up the slope of the stands towards the top, from where an infected was perched. With a screeching cry, it leapt down towards Louis, its claws outstretched. Four different rapports exploded around them as each of them fired into the infected's face. It flopped backward onto the cement floor in front of the double doors, its head a bloody void.

"Why do they always go for me?" Louis said, ejecting his clip and swapping it for a fresh one. "She's the one wearing the red jacket. I thought all feral things went for the bright red stuff."

"Maybe they think you're cute," Zoey said, lowering her rifle and throwing Louis a smirk. "Loosened tie, untucked shirt—they're all over it."

"Yeah, yeah. Always the black man," Louis grumbled.

"Sorry to butt in, kids, but we gotta hustle," Bill interjected, heading for the stand steps. The three of them trailed, each keeping their eyes on the massacre below. Just about all of the barricaded wall was now a pile of rubble at the edge of the field, and swarms of infected kept coming from the dark wilderness for what seemed like miles. They had to find a way to stop the sirens from blaring, or find a way to get the infected to fuck off.

A wave of people—infected and healthy—stormed up the steps towards their aisle, and each of them took their respective targets—Bill always got the caboose, Francis, the leader—and they operated like a hive-mind, reading each others' thoughts and killing the targets that were unclaimed. When they got to the end of the aisle and found the stairs in the middle, Bill led them down, heading for the bottom. A man ran by, and Bill stopped him awkwardly, shoving a pistol in his hands.

"So, Sergeant Overbeck," Francis called over the din, "what's the plan of action?"

"Make a distraction!" he called, knocking the teeth out of an infected with the butt end of his rifle.

"You mean something more distracting than the fire alarm?" Francis shouted back.

"I was thinking something along the lines of a real fire, myself," Bill shouted back. "Anyone got anymore Molotov's?"

"I left that in my other pants' pocket," Zoey shouted sarcastically.

"Well, the only way out of Hell is though it," Bill declared. They all glanced at the field, simply teeming with infected, and they all nodded, heading for the railing.

They jumped over the railing, landing heavily on the blood-splattered grass, and continued onward through the haze of battle between man and disease. "Reloading!" could be heard every few seconds from any given point on the field, including their small group. As soon as it seemed they were making good headway, Francis's body snapped back as a long, pink, vile smelling tongue wrapped around him, pulling him back across the field towards the stands

"Up there!" Zoey shouted as they opened fire. Francis was yelling the entire time the thing dragged him across the field; Zoey herself had never been embraced by one of those smoking infected, but Bill had told her it was the most unpleasant feeling, like being prepared for dinner.

One of their shots finally clipped the infected, and its head blew up in a puff of blood and smoke. Francis dropped to the ground, squirming and kicking to get the tongue off of him. When he was free, he got up to chase after his shotgun, which he had dropped, and the other three continued taking down the hordes of infected that raced after them from the broken barricades. It was as if there was an infinite amount of infected, and the four of them were up against all odds. Well, against all odds for anyone else, he supposed.

As Francis dove for his shotgun, a few infected closed in on him, and he spun to face them, pulling his hatchet from his belt. He slashed the first in the chin, then slapped another in the face with the flat end before cleaving its head in two. Another tried to tackle him, but he stood fast, pushing it back and swiping at it with the hatchet.

When he picked up his shotgun again, he shot the fourth infected square in the gut, the recoil absorbed completely through his tall, thick frame. Smirking to himself, he chased after his team, shotgun in one hand, hatchet in the other.

The other three had been preoccupied keeping a loud, leaping infected at bay while warding off the others. As Francis rejoined them, he punched the closest infected in the nose, hearing a satisfying snap before it hit the ground. He shook his hand out from the sting, but he was smiling all the same.

The building behind them seemed to groan loudly as something from within hit the inner wall thickly. All four of them turned toward the stands to see soldiers streaming out the hole in the wall where the beast had charged in.

"Oh, fuck, no," Francis muttered weakly.

The thing roared as it galloped into the field from the hole, seemingly recovered from whatever had disoriented it earlier. As they panned out in different directions, Bill shouted: "Look for something to set it on fire with!"

Zoey felt she'd rather preoccupy her time pelting the thing with bullets first, but she found herself frantically searching the field for something—anything that was flammable. But before she could even conceive of what it was she should be looking for, she could see the hulk change direction and head directly for her.

"Zoey, just fucking run!" Louis shouted, and she obliged. Dropping her aim, Zoey turned and ran through the field, weaving her way through the bodies on the ground and other infected charging her. A few soldiers and survivors alike had emerged with weapons in hand, shooting at the tank of a beast as it chased the young woman down, but to no avail.

_Note to self,_ Zoey thought in her light-headed daze, _find yourself a blue sweater instead.___

She could feel its fists pound into the ground as it chased her like an ape, and as it got closer, she knew she was in trouble. Turning in her step, she lifted her pistols again, preparing to go down fighting. The infected turned his giants arm back, preparing to swing at her, when an ear-splitting boom went off behind it and she was shaken to the ground.

She looked up to see the infected charging in the other direction, its back blazing with flame. Across the field a small group of soldiers were handling a flame thrower and preparing to take off in the other direction. They had risked firing a high-powered weapon at the monster while she was standing right next to it!

Zoey checked herself to make sure that she was not in fact injured or on fire before taking off to rejoin her group. As the group of soldiers dispersed, Zoey watched as the woman soldier stayed behind—the very one she had confronted in the facility—and aimed a heavy looking weapon at the infected as it approached. Her eyes widened—the monster propelled into the air, lifting a thick arm poised to strike, as the soldier fired into its face.

The other infected and soldiers who were nearby flew into the air briefly like rag dolls as a ball of fire erupted from between the soldier and the infected. Zoey shielded her eyes and crouched down instinctively, wrapping her arms across her face. When she opened her eyes and looked back, half the field was on fire, the infected was dead, and the soldier lay thirty feet away from where she had crouched before, crumpled, burning and still.

What she saw next unnerved her. She did not consider herself a weak person, but over the last week, she had had her moments. But this sight was something she hadn't come across yet in all of her struggles. The infected rushed towards the fire—all in a yelping, slobbering mess—and fought over each other to get into the flames. They flailed like mad and waddled through the inferno, and something in the sight made Zoey believe that they were happy to be there. It didn't make her feel sad... but she was crying. She was crying because of how horrifyingly sick it was. They used to be human. But something had been taken from them. It was as if it had been robbed of her, too.

She hugged her arms. _I am still whole, aren't I?_ She stared, dumbstruck and paralyzed, feeling as if her hope were slipping away from her like sand through her fingers. They all danced manically in the fire, and it grew. Somewhere far off she heard her name, but it didn't register with her.

"Come _on_, girl!" Louis said, snatching her up by her arm. The infected streamed in only by a trickle now; the fire alarm was still blaring, but it only lured them there. The fire summoned them and swallowed them whole. _Purgatory_, she thought.

Zoey found herself running along behind Louis, Francis and Bill, each of them sporting some sort of hunch or limp. A cat-like infected crawled out of the shadows, growling ferociously at them as they ran. Francis drew his hatchet and hurled it at the monster's head. It didn't impale his skull, rather it made a sizable crater on its crown. It shivered before falling over on its side like a frozen statue.

Zoey looked back over her shoulder one more time. The entire front of the field was ablaze, and it was catching on the plastic chairs in the front stands. The woman's body was absorbed by the fire, and what was left of the horde was dancing in the flames, slowly dropping dead like flies. All the military equipment had been strewn aside as if it were merely a collection of children's toys.

Once they were over the threshold of the wall, they passed a couple of soldiers, spattered with blood and teeming with wounds. They only stared back at the fleeing survivors; everyone else who had been in that crowd had died or was on the way. Zoey watched them, waiting for them to either turn or try to detain them. But they never made a move.

Zoey turned forward and never looked back. They ran along silently, none of them willing to slow until the flaming ball diamond was far behind them.

* * *

They sat on a picnic table, looking over their weapons and supplies. They were not too far from the coast, but they weren't certain that was where they wanted to go. After leaving the stadium behind them, they had navigated through the trees along the highway, and deemed the park a safe and secure place to stay while they collected their thoughts. But for the past fifteen minutes each of them was silent. Then Zoey finally broke it like hot iron on ice.

"That woman died saving me," she said bluntly. "She fired a grenade at close range to kill that bastard, and blew herself up in the process."

"You know, I... I didn't really follow your advice, Bill," Francis admitted after a brief silence. Zoey bowed her head, staying quiet. "I tried to be all neutral ground with them, but I got pretty pissed with them at the drop of a dime."

"Me, too," Louis added.

"I really didn't practice what I preached, either," Bill admitted. "I woulda killed any of those assholes without much hesitation if... if Zoey weren't around. But when we were leaving, I thought, 'God, you ain't any better than they are.' A lot of people died back there. And there I was, puttin' them all into the same damn folder, when the entire time it was that good for nothing asshole doctor who was running the show.

"There weren't many bad people there. Just scared ones. All of us were scared."

"A lot of those people were innocent," Zoey said. "Those survivors, some of the soldiers... Frank..."

"Dr. Peters is probably dead. You know?" Francis asked Louis. He nodded. "_That_ was a guy who didn't deserve to die."

"It just doesn't work like that, I guess," Louis said. "Doesn't matter if you're a 'good guy' or a 'bad guy', because with all those infected running around out there, 'good guys' and 'bad guys' don't exist."

"I just..." Zoey stalled. "I've always wanted to say I was a good person. Everyone does. But after all that... we're too narrow-minded to really understand what it means to be truly good or bad. Even... even Dr. Ford had his good intentions. We're all trying to fix things, but we're doing it in a different way."

"Yeah. Hitler was trying to do good things, too," Francis said scathingly. "Those guys made me look like a saint."

Zoey turned her head away from all of them. "I shot at Frank."

She let it hang in the air, wanting to continue but not confident that she could. She lowered her head again and stared at the ground as she spoke. "Something was wrong with him. He was coming after me, and... he surprised me, in the weapons closet. I took a shot at him and set him on fire. That's why the alarm went off. All those people... they died because of what I did."

"Zoey," Bill said, turning towards her in the dark. "Can't call a man safe until he's dead."

They were quiet. "In other words, don't count your eggs before they hatch?" Francis asked.

"That sounds a little more optimistic," Louis agreed.

"_Weeell_ done, Francis!" Bill said, clapping his hands on his knees. "You've finally managed to pull your head clear from your ass and _think_ with it!"

"Stop it!" Zoey yelled, slamming her fist into the picnic table and staring at them all. They fell silent quickly. "I killed a man! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"I know I'm usually the glass half full guy," Louis said, "but girl... you've been spendin' the last three weeks killin' people."

"You're telling me that those people dying doesn't matter?" Zoey bit back, lifting her hands as if blood covered them. "You're telling me its okay to do what I want, as long as I look out for myself?"

Bill turned to her. "I'm saying that you can't keep psychoanalyzing everything that happens in your life as a moral judgment. I went through two tours in 'Nam, and I killed a lot of people. I don't think it was pretty, and if I could give those people back their lives, I would. But there are things you can't undo, and the only thing you can do is accept what's happened and move on, try to improve yourself, or some sorta bright bullshit like that."

He pulled out a match (from which a book was conveniently tucked in the inside of one of the packages of cigarettes Zoey had given him) and struck it against the picnic table, lighting his smoke. He took a long drag on it, then pulled it back, sighing gratefully as a plume of smoke coiled from his lips. Zoey nodded and looked away, sighing lightly. He was always as gentle as sandpaper, but she knew he was right.

"So... what do you guys say we do now?" Louis asked. "Dr. Peters mentioned the other evac zone up north. You guys wanna go there?"

All three of them let out a snort and an identical: "No."

"Okay, well... what _do_ you want to do?"

Zoey looked at her hands, then sighed. "We should just disappear."

Bill fiddled with his cigarette, deciding whether or not to speak, then said: "You want to take a trip up to Norwich?"

Zoey perked her head, looking in the distance as she contemplated his words.

"Norwich?" Francis cried, making sure to keep his voice low as to not attract any undesired attention. "Why the hell would we wanna drag our sorry asses up there?"

"I think I'd want that," Zoey said softly. "I think I _need_ that."

Louis and Francis exchanged knowing glances in the dark, and Bill stuffed his cigarette into his mouth again. "All right."

As dawn crept up over the Eastern horizon, the four of them began their trek north, moving with one another like they'd been doing it their whole lives. And no matter what she found back home, no matter when the world brought itself back to its feet, Zoey knew she would always be moving with them, she knew they would always be an inseparable part of her life. A smile came to her lips, and she looked over to Bill, who glanced back at her with a grin of his own.

"I think you were wrong about one thing," Zoey muttered as they crept through the trees.

"What?"

"I think you can call us happy before we're left for dead."

He laughed heartily, then nodded. "I guess you're right."

As they crossed the road, Francis called hoarsely: "Three o'clock!" and they all turned to fire.


End file.
